


Not Put in Your Heart to Stay

by ChartreuseChanteuse



Category: The Dukes of Hazzard (TV), The Dukes of Hazzard - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2014-07-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 13:50:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 34
Words: 226,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChartreuseChanteuse/pseuds/ChartreuseChanteuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bo is taking NASCAR by storm and Luke is back home taking care of Jesse and the farm, both of them living the lives they've agreed upon.  Until Daisy's crisis brings their tidily separated lives back together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Diverges from canon after S3E1, Carnival of Thrills. The rest, I think, will probably explain itself as it goes along. Borrows elements from the first reunion movie, but doesn't take place in that time frame. Thanks in advance for reading.

It's a clank and thud that pulls him out of his sleep. Head under a pillow, tongue scraping across dry lips that taste just as stale and sour as the inside of his mouth does, when there's second muffled thud from the far side of his bedroom door. It's the kind of thing that used to have him on his feet before he was even awake, hands searching for a bow or a baseball bat with which to defend his family and home. Now it barely gets him to roll over, still clinging to his pillow and the fantasy of sleep.

Too early to be up, too early to be thinking, though his brain is performing some sort of a muddled attempt anyway. A bang of metal on metal, muted by his pillow as he tries to work it out; where he was last night and who else was there, what the girls looked like and whether he brought any home. Doesn't think so, his head doesn't hurt and the light that's sneaking around the edges of his curtains is soft and easy on his eyes. Sure, there's that remnant flavor of last night's beer mixed with open-mouthed breathing that reminds him he did have a few, but he wasn't drunk enough to have brought home any long-legged, short-haired girls and then forgotten about it.

Water running through pipes always sounds the same in this place. Smooth, high-pitched hiss whether it's coming from the untidy kitchen or the shambles of a bathroom, so he can't tell where the intruder is. Just that some part of them may or may not be wet.

It's not Tuesday; at least he doesn't think it is. He rolls again, shoving the pillow to the side and letting his fingertips find his forehead, eyebrows then his eyelids. Quick spark behind the lids as he rubs and he's pretty certain it's Thursday, which means it's not Mathilda. He opens his eyes all the way but there's nothing to look at here other than the shadows creeping around his walls and the clock radio that doesn't tell time anymore and only brings in one hissing and crackling station anyway. It's just a beacon of orange light in a dim room and it can't tell him the day or date or who that is on the far side of his bedroom door.

Quick scratch to his head as he sits up. The room doesn't spin or sway, which goes to confirm that he's neither drunk nor hung over, just tired. Fingers drop down to scrape across his bare belly next; he lets the yawn he just emitted settle into the tight confines of the room around him and draws in a fresh breath. Looks down at the well-worn pajama pants he's had since he was a teen, with their faded blue stripes and short legs that barely reach his calves anymore.

Then he forgets any notion he had of thinking; he's on his feet, door opening with a spastic shudder as it bumps against his foot before swinging wide. Big steps toward the light and those wide bay windows facing northeast, but he doesn't spare a glance toward the sunrise, just keeps on marching until there's warmth and softness in his arms. Small struggle to get the right grip and then it settles.

"Bo!" Daisy calls into his chest, her arms squeezing at his neck. It's what his nose knew before his arms, and his arms knew before his brain, but he's all caught up to himself now. There are only three people in the world with keys to this place (well, four if the rental office is to be counted, but they aren't open this early anyway and have never been known to show up in his tiny galley of a kitchen without calling first): himself, Mathilda – who he was compelled to hire even if he's halfway embarrassed to let her do her job – and Daisy.

"Hey, girl," he answers back, feeling the smile form on his face, stretching out old and unused muscles. She burrows into his chest a little harder, he kisses her hair and listens to oil sizzling in one of the two frying pans he owns. Maybe he should be grateful to Mathilda after all; otherwise he'd never have a clean dish in the place and his kitchen wouldn't stand a chance of smelling like it does now. Like hope, like the promise of something good, like a reason to get out of bed while the sun is still more down than up. "What're you doing here?"

Off his chest then with a quick pat to soften the way she shoves herself free. Back to her frying pan, even if it's not really hers, even if the one she's supposed to be standing over is a good fifty miles to the northeast and probably took her an hour and a half to drive away from in the sort of traffic that clogs these parts on a Thursday morning. She uses a spatula – again, he ought to be grateful to the one-day-a-week maid that makes her way through all the "bachelor" apartments in this complex that he's got clean silverware of any kind – to spread the oil around, then pulls a bootlegger one-eighty to start digging through his refrigerator. Choices in there are going to be somewhere between few and none; Mathilda cleans but she doesn't shop. Still, Daisy manages to move busily around his too-small kitchen, cracking store-bought eggs and mixing them with store-bought milk. He's got the basics, anyway.

"Daisy?" The girl's humming something loud and fast and frantic, stirring her egg concoction with single-minded frenzy. "Girl? It ain't that I don't appreciate the breakfast," which is bound to be better than any in recent memory. "But how come you're here?" _Making mine when there's another man you ought to be cooking for._

She stops then, mid-stir. Her hair is wild, puffed out on the sides like she's been caught in a high wind, and her eyes are big. Too shiny, her face pink, her slender body all but shaking in her demure red flannel shirt and blue jeans.

"Bo," she says and her voice is thin, high. A little shaky around the edges. "Will you go with me?" And though the question doesn't make any sense, he's already halfway to a nod. Because he has a long history of following where she leads, because she's obviously upset, because he loves her, he'll go just about anywhere she asks him to without thought. "I want to go home."

Home. Well. He does have to think about that one.

* * *

It's almost more a feel than a sound. The floorboards under him were cut and laid before the Civil War; they've survived hurricanes and earthquakes, fires and termites and five generations of Dukes. They've got gaps big enough to swallow a pocketful of change and they're not particularly safe as far as bare feet and splinters go. But they know the feeling, and they rumble it up through his legs, his body and his hands that long to grip tightly and feel the earth drop away from him. He's out the front door and running to the patch of dirt that serves as a driveway before he even has time for second thoughts.

(Or first ones, really. He has no thoughts at all, only wants, and that's dangerous. Very dangerous.)

Jesse's there first; of course he is. The kitchen, where he was sitting in those same overalls, drinking from that same mug, reading that same newspaper (okay, the date lines change, but the stories are always the same; it is, after all, the _Hazzard Gazette_ ) is far closer to where the General now sits, ticking and cooling after a long drive.

A head pops out of the passenger window, slender body following behind and Luke's hands are out to catch hold of her before she can even think of putting those fancy, high-heeled boots on the rough dirt of the farmyard. She's in his arms and snuggling against his chest like an old habit that he never meant to break.

"Daisy," he mumbles. Her greeting, if she gives one, is lost in the bluster of Jesse's loud welcome. The old man's arms are wide – looks like he wants to hug the General Lee and Luke might not be surprised if he did, but he winds up engulfing Bo instead. Not so much as a tap on his shoulder and they're switching partners in this little dance of Duke hugs. The girl is clearly not herself (or is too much herself, an equally dangerous prospect) and needs a wise old man to comfort and protect her, while Bo, as always, gets relegated to him.

He has, when it gets right down to it, no complaints about that. His arms still fit tidily around Bo's shoulders, his fingers know where to find soft hair, his head turns to find that safe little nook in the curve of Bo's neck where he'll be able to breathe without smothering. Bo's got one arm around his ribs, the other hand curling up to grasp at his shoulder, warm and far too close. But it's the kind of day where it might just be that no one notices two Duke boys all but slow dancing in each others arms, holding on too long and too tight.

Lips, close to his ear. "Just a couple days, Luke," is somewhere between a promise and a warning.

* * *

The General's engine is a dangerous shade of warm and that's probably the only reason that four Dukes are so quickly squeezed around that same kitchen table where they've spent a lifetime eating, instead of staring at the innards of a car that he and Luke built out of a few bolts and a ton of dreams. Cold water gets passed around to thirsty travelers, ice making the first few moments musical until it melts down and the glasses become slick with condensation. Lemonade, apparently, went the way of their female cousin, because there's none in the house.

Daisy tells her sad story over the scars and dings of the table that's held Duke food since the time of their great-grandparents. She starts at the beginning (even though they all already know that part) because she's a Hazzard-bred girl that's got an innate skill with unwinding a yarn. It starts here at home, where she met the mildly attractive and noticeably slick L. D. Southerland nearly three years ago, and stretches on up to the southern suburbs of Winston-Salem, North Carolina where she moved after the wedding in the summer of eighty-one. From there it gets to the part that Jesse and Luke don't already know, and he can see his old uncle's face going red around its sympathetic edges as he hears it. Luke just looks plain murderous and Daisy fiddles with her fingers as she admits that she didn't know L.D. the way she thought she did, that his short stay in Hazzard should have been a sign of things to come. She shouldn't have been so quick to believe that he was driven away by Boss Hogg, who didn't want a competitive farm equipment salesman living in his county; she should have known that L.D. didn't stay much of anywhere, or with anyone, too long. He'd left her behind in Clemmons, North Carolina the same as he'd left Hazzard, and she didn't even quite know where he was to divorce him.

Bo had heard it all this morning when Daisy showed up in his kitchen, the tale told over a breakfast that had no right to taste as good as it did, considering it had been made with heartbroken fingers. Maybe there were even tears in the eggs, he didn't know, but he'd been hungry and she'd been itching for someone to cook for, so it had all worked out in the end.

When the eating and telling were done, he'd held onto her while she cried, rubbing her back and saying sure, he'd go back to Hazzard with her, because she was worried about telling their uncle, because he was kin, because he loved her and because even Luke would understand why he'd done it. Oh, he'd told her she had nothing to fear on the first count, reminded her of the next two out loud and left the last one to bounce around in his own head where it would be safe from people who didn't want to know. Which was just about everyone.

But everyone's here for Daisy now, to deal with her shattering present, and not to worry over a past that never quite happened.

* * *

Let's go, Bo.

It's a leftover phrase that got lost in three years ago, but he halfway wants to say it now. To jump into that orange car out there and—

"I thought," Daisy chokes out, her voice dripping with sorrow. There's a pain in his left palm and it's only then that he realizes that his own nails are digging into the flesh inside the curl of his fist. "I loved him."

And that's the thing he can't fix, couldn't even if it did make sense for Bo and him to go leaping into their old racer and heading for the hills or the swamp or a dirt road in the middle of nowhere at all. Off in search of L.D. Southerland, wherever he might be (probably wearing that same cheesy brown suit he put on most days of the week), to hunt him down and pound the tar out of him, but they can't. Or he can't. Bo can, he's got the run of anywhere he wants to go. Luke still has to go downtown and ask the fat man in white for permission if he wants to leave the county.

(And if L.D. is smart, he's nowhere near Hazzard County, nowhere near Georgia, nowhere near the south, period. Luke wouldn't be sorry or surprised to hear that the man has taken up with the armed services, been put into an entirely different brown suit altogether, and gotten himself stationed on the other side of the world just to keep the Dukes from finding him and giving him what he deserves.)

"Well, Daisy-girl," their uncle consoles, because someone has to be gentle about it all. To take care of the heartbroken girl instead of swearing revenge on the man who did the breaking. "You did love him. And he loved you." That's just the kind of thing the old man would say. He probably believes it, too, that love is that easy to come by, that easy to walk away from. "But he just wasn't the staying kind. And that ain't your fault."

Luke has to get up then, to walk. To get away from all three of the fools in this kitchen who love too easily and casually, who don't seem to know consequences or weigh long-term outcomes before they pick their partners. Daisy got left because she chose the wrong man, period. He lied to her, she believed him and that's the main reason Luke wants to grab him by the scruff of the neck and drag him back down here like the miserable cur that he is. So he can say he's sorry, tell her it's over and it was never love to begin with, that it was just a pair of fools that never belonged together. Then Luke could let him go with a right cross to his chin so he'd remember that he's not welcome in Hazzard ever again. But he's nowhere to be found, there's nothing to do but comfort Daisy and their uncle's got that covered.

"I got to go," he says, the beginning of a lame explanation for why he stands so quickly that his chair tumbles backward. He sets it back on its feet and pats Daisy's arm because the clatter has startled her. "Check on the crops." Such as they are. A patch of corn so scrawny it would set his moonshining ancestors to laughing, some melons around the edge. Cotton that's nowhere near ready to pick and needs no tending. But no one questions him as the screen door screams against the violence he inflicts on it, then slaps shut behind him. And he's not surprised to hear a second slap come a few seconds later. He even stops halfway across the farmyard and waits to be caught up to.

Takes a little longer than it used to, what with the way Bo takes the time to look around at the oak tree, the barn, the fences, the remnants of dandelions in the grass. Enamored, like he didn't spend twenty years tilling this same patch of dirt, spring, summer and fall. (Then again, maybe Luke can understand the staring. Maybe he remembers doing a bit of looking around himself when his hair was still far too short and his body fully accustomed to reveille at four in the morning.) Finally his cousin is there at his side, arm coming easily around his shoulders the same as it ever has. As if Bo hasn't been gone for three years.

Luke slips out from under the heat of it and starts marching out to the fields. If Bo minds, he doesn't say, just does his best to keep up to the pace Luke sets. His legs may be long but his breath is short and the muscle mass that he has built while he's been away is in his shoulders, not his legs. Not the same well-rounded farm boy he used to be.

He slows when they approach the tree line that bounds their fields. Roots and stones scattered at their feet like dangerous memories of a bumpy past and he reckons it would be for the best if Bo didn't hurt himself when he's only been home for an hour.

"You're doing good on the circuit, cousin," he offers, stopping once he's fully in the shade. He lets his eye scan across the corn that's planted in the open space beyond, tall green leaves creaking against the soft breeze that ambles down from the mountains this time of year. "That race in Michigan was something else."

"Cale won it," Bo answers back with half a shrug, as if that's all that matters. Would seem like that should have changed somewhere in the past three years, like Bo would have realized that NASCAR isn't the tri-county dirt track circuit where he could pretty much count on winning every race. Coming in third in a Winston Cup race is nothing to be ashamed of.

"Maybe," Luke agrees, leaning back against a tree, mostly still watching the corn do not much of anything at all and sparing only the corner of one eye to look at Bo. "But he's been driving that track since the first NASCAR race on it. And besides, them last laps with you getting under Bobby Allison at the fourth turn – that was really amazing, Bo. A fine piece of driving."

"It's a fast track," Bo admits. "Fun to drive." Luke gives in, finally, and turns to face him. To really look at him in those crisp blue jeans that have never seen a day's dirty farm labor, pretty boots sticking out the bottom, far more decorative than practical. Black t-shirt with a logo on the front with the letters MMI, which must mean something to someone. Hair a shade darker than it ought to be in July, longer than he was wearing it a few years ago. The difference between a farmer and a NASCAR driver, Luke reckons as he runs a hand through his own hair, succeeding only in plastering it down in sweaty waves. "I didn't figure you ever watched any of my races," Bo says in that small voice. The one Luke's always hated, the one that announces that he doubts himself. "I didn't figure Uncle Jesse would ever let a television into his house," tries to tuck that vulnerability away, to hide it behind their shared childhood with a man that's never lost any love for newfangled things.

"He don't," Luke agrees. "I catch races down at the garage with Cooter." And half of Hazzard's men, standing shoulder to shoulder and staring at one tiny screen that flips and fades with weak reception half the time. He wonders, sometimes, whether folks out walking around Hazzard Square wonder about the roar that emerges from the garage every time Bo Duke passes another driver. Or whether they just know, because all of Hazzard loves its NASCAR-driving son.

* * *

"Over doughnuts and beer?" Bo asks, that familiar little crack coming into his voice at the end. Telling tales on him, every bit as much as the heat in his face must be. It's not like he can help himself, not when Luke's looking at him like that. Like he used to, and the intensity hasn't changed over the years Bo's been living the NASCAR life in Mooresville, North Carolina. In fact, nothing much about Luke has changed; not the pattern of plaid in his shirt or the way his sleeves are rolled up above the elbow, not the way his sticks to his back with sweat. Not the way he stands, legs slightly spread, shoulder against the trunk of a tree and arms folded across his chest. Protecting his heart like he always has and it's that thought that gets Bo's breath back to normal from where it was caught in his throat.

Little curl at the corner of Luke's lip, memories of better days at the garage with nothing in their pockets but lint, no way to pay Cooter back for the breakfasts he provided other than to offer their company. Which seemed to work out fine for all concerned. "Beer, anyway. Listen, Bo," and everything's serious again, from his eyes on down to those arms still solidly locked across his chest. "You done a good thing, bringing Daisy home. I'm glad you came and I reckon it was the right thing to do."

"But?"

"No but," Luke informs him. "It was the right thing to do. Now," and he stands up from the tree and unfolds his arms long enough to make a sweeping gesture, like Bo's a lady that he's ushering somewhere public. _You go first._ "Best we get back to the house before Jesse tans our hides for running off."

Funny, Bo would swear that Luke was the one who did the running. What he did was more like following. A habit so ingrained in him that he never considered doing anything else.

"Jesse don't look like he wants to tan no hides." He looks older than Bo remembers. Not frail, more like tired. A little whiter in the whiskers and the crows have left a few more footprints around the edges of his eyes and lips. But he looked like murder to see Daisy cry, and Bo reckons he can still bellow like a bull when he's riled. So he turns and follows Luke home, the same as he's done a thousand times before.

* * *

"There, now," Jesse's saying as they're sitting down to – it's too late for lunch and too early for supper, but it's a full meal all the same. Odd time to eat and he reckons they'll all be right back here in the kitchen come midnight, poking around for leftovers. Then again, teary afternoons always have led to late night meetings back at this same table after everyone has given up on sleeping. Maybe Jesse's just being practical.

Or maybe he's trying to feed his prodigal children. Bo's leaner body probably looks skinny to an old man who has never trained for NASCAR, and Daisy's been crying, which is a malady like a cold – it has to be fed. At least, that's always been basic Jesse Duke logic. Luke can't say he understands it; just that he's used to it.

"See? Ain't this nice, all of us together for a meal." A little too slow, a touch too loud, like it's being said to someone of questionable intelligence – maybe Rosco or Cletus. Or the livestock. Jesse at his soothing best, but that doesn't stop him from unleashing a lethal stare at Bo for eating a stray biscuit crumb before grace. Luke snorts, Bo looks properly repentant, the blessing gets said and the food begins to disappear at an alarming rate. Maybe they've all just forgotten what it's like to eat at the same table as Bo Duke. As if to prove the point, an elbow knocks into his when he's chasing some peas around his plate. The Duke boys have lost track of their old rhythms. "So," Jesse jumps in, somewhere between Bo's first ham biscuit and his second. "How long can you stay, boy?"

"Well," Bo starts to answer, and it's clear he's forgotten what it's like to eat at the same table as his family, too. He gets a second warning glare from Jesse for talking with food in his mouth, dips his head and looks sorrier this time than the last. Trying to keep his hide from being whipped, but Luke's pretty sure that won't happen today anyway. Not when Bo's technically a guest and Daisy's eyes are red around the edges. Jesse probably won't even raise his voice for a week. (Or for as long as Daisy stays. Luke notices how _that_ question doesn't get asked.) Bo's sad, little-boy-blue eyes lift from where they've been dutifully studying the grain of the table in penance for being naughty, and he carefully swallows the last bit of biscuit he's been chewing. "I figure I can get away with two days. Next race is in Nashville, so I ain't got to travel far." He shoves half a ham biscuit into his mouth like that little pause to talk near-about starved him to death.

"That ain't until the sixteenth." All right, so Luke might not be the Duke boy that drives the NASCAR circuit. He grew up enough to figure out that building cars and driving fast aren't as important as family and keeping the farm running, but that doesn't mean he doesn't know the season's schedule inside out, up, down and backwards. It was his favorite sport before it was Bo's. "More than a week away."

Bo looks at him like he figures maybe Luke's pulling some sort of shuck and jive on him. Or has gone a little crazy, maybe. Losing his mind from too many hours in the midday sun and forgetting rules they made years ago. About short visits and holidays only, but damn it all, he's glad to see Bo. And he figures he already made that plenty clear.

"Yeah, but I got a sponsor meeting on Tuesday." Which would still let him stay through the weekend. "And Butch is already going to make my life hell – sorry, Uncle Jesse." Oh, that boy's bucking for that whipping that Jesse seems determined not to give him. Swearing at the dinner table is his worst offense yet. "I mean, he's going to make me miserable for not being there today and tomorrow."

"Butch?" Luke asks, watching Jesse's face go red.

"Um," is as good an answer as Bo is capable of under that steely stare.

"Bo's trainer," Daisy supplies, and Luke's head snaps to look across the table at her. The first words she's said directly to him since she got home, and they go to prove that she knows more about Bo's life now than Luke does. It doesn't make him happy, but he smiles to thank her anyway. The girl's been through enough lately.

"Physical trainer," Bo corrects, talking quick now, because that's always been the best way out of a whipping. "His real name is Pedro, but he don't like to be called that. So we call him Butch because it sounds like something a guy who spends all his time in a gym ought to be named." Bo offers up a nervous smile, a little sick around the edges. Jesse's sitting back now, taking a drink of the cold coffee in his mug. "He, uh, he makes sure I do my weight training and my core strength exercises, running my laps and all that stuff." But the old man's eyes are still firmly fixed on Bo, thinking so hard about sending him to the barn that the words don't need to be spoken aloud. "And if I miss a training session, he makes me do double. Or he'll throw in something extra like squat thrusts or he'll put a weight on my back when I do my push ups. Or make me bench press two hundred fifty pounds or something."

"He'll _what_?"

Bo's anxious eyes flick from Jesse to Luke. "It's okay, Luke. He knows what he's doing and he ain't going to let me get hurt." He picks up what's left of his biscuit. "He'd get fired if he did."

Well, that does nothing to redeem this Pedro-who-likes-to-be-called-Butch guy in Luke's eyes. If his loyalty is to his employer and not to the people he trains, he shouldn't be giving Bo any exercises to do at all, especially not the special kind that he seems to save for drivers who need to be punished.

"Anyway, I reckon I won't get penalized for missing a couple of days if I explain that I was helping Daisy out. Butch likes Daisy." The other half of that ham biscuit gets shoved into his mouth.

The girl's eyes light up for the first time since she's been home and a fond little smile tickles at the corners of her mouth. Seems like the liking goes both ways, and Luke's going to have to kill Butch. Or maybe Bo for introducing them. Or Daisy, because why does she know Bo's physical trainer when Luke doesn't?

(Because they live near each other. Because no one made any rules about how often Daisy could go to Mooresville to see Bo or how long she could stay, no one said she couldn't be involved in Bo's life. Because – Luke doesn't want to think about it anymore.)

"Well, that's fine, just fine," Jesse says without a trace of sarcasm. With a smile in his beard that seems to have forgotten any urge to make Bo's hide pay for his NASCAR-dirtied mouth. "That gives us time to have ourselves a picnic tomorrow. If you boys reckon you can rustle up some crawdads, that is."

Bo wipes his fingers on his jeans instead of his napkin. Tries to be clever and hide what he's doing, but like every gesture he's made since he was three, it's big and obvious. Still, he properly chews his food and swallows before speaking and that seems to be a fine enough show of manners for now. Jesse's smile is holding out longer than it probably has since Bo left home three years back.

"You still got them traps?" Of course they do. Nothing has changed here in Hazzard. Not like NASCAR where there's a new track every week, a town full of different bars and girls and— Luke's not sorry about how they decided to divide their responsibilities. At least not most days.

"You bet," Jesse tells him, and it's pretty much decided that he and Bo will get up before dawn, grab the crawdad traps and go down to Zack's landing to hunt up a boat. They'll spend the morning catching crawdads, Jesse will spend the afternoon cooking them up, and come twilight they'll have themselves a grand picnic like they used to, crowded with friends and neighbors. And Rosco Coltrane because Daisy wants to see Enos and you can't have one lawman without all the others. Some remnant sense of Duke fairness dictates that.

"And you can bring Hannah," Jesse tells Luke, beaming with happiness over the fine affair to come. "And she can meet Bo. Won't that be nice?"

Oh, it'll be dandy.


	2. Chapter 2

It turns out that there are two surprises for him, neither of them exactly pleasant. To make it all the more confusing, they come in reverse order.

First, after a seemingly endless supper (during which they take turns coaxing Daisy to eat anything at all), he gets a tour of his own house. Or the one he grew up in anyway; it doesn't seem to be his anymore. Because first he gets shown what is called Luke and Hannah's room, and then he gets to learn all about Hannah.

There were rules that accompanied him to NASCAR. More got added later but like most important things between him and Luke, they're tacit, secrets to the outside world. A remnant of their moonshining days where important information was conveyed through the eyes and if that wasn't possible, with fuzzy sentences missing half their words. The kind of thing that hid their intentions from revenuers and lawmen, and eventually even their own family.

_We've got to go with girls._

_We won't tell each other about the girls we go with._

As the old family tales have it, great-grandma Duke was mostly confined to her bed in the last years of her life, plagued by an undiagnosed and barely treated intestinal illness. A little moonshine to cure what ails you, a lot of bed rest. But she was a true Duke, not the kind to be stuck indoors, so a porch was built off the kitchen and screened in to let her spend her declining days there. The floorboards are still scarred where her bed was dragged out and set for those days when she could no longer get to her feet. That porch has always been Jesse's haunt, with its rickety old swing chained to the rafters, and the screen that needs replacing after the storms of each spring.

There's another space off the back side of the kitchen that's been jokingly called "the back porch" but it's really just something their daddies' generation of Duke boys built to make room for tubs and washboards and drying clothes so that the growing family – starting with wives and ending with children – would have a place to get their clothing and their bodies clean. Daisy's been the only one to use it over the course of Bo's lifetime, though he reckons that somehow Luke and Jesse wash their own clothes now.

And then there's the formal front porch, which has been there through generations of Dukes and is almost as old as the main house. Walled in, with a window on either side of the door, smelling of paint and newness all these years later because it's been pretty much unused since it was built. Of course it has; it's a formal entrance and Hazzard has no use for formality.

Or there used to be a formal porch, anyway. Doesn't seem to be there anymore. Not like it was.

"I wasn't doing us no good anyhow," Luke mumbles from somewhere behind him in the hallway.

Daisy's hair is tickling at his neck; she's standing right in front of him and facing what was once an entryway of sorts, a place to wipe one's boots if one ever did come in through the front door. (But one didn't, and if one had they would probably be wearing polished leather shoes instead of muddy boots.) Now it's been opened up, widened and become one with the porch, a whole new room built into the inside of the old farmhouse without disturbing the outside a whole lot.

And not just any room. The afternoon sun on the floorboards, making its way through lace curtains in the row of windows, leaves bright patterns like a field of yellow flowers that Bo could almost swear he smells. The walls bear no dirt and are whiter than he can remember any part of the house being, and there to the right where once was nothing more than a lonely and unloved coat rack, is a bed. Big enough to sleep a small family, a white and pale blue quilt on the top that looks soft as a cloud.

"It's lovely," Daisy says, voice full of longing, because it's clearly a room made for two. Aunt Lavinia's needlepoint, the sole decoration, hangs over the bed to prove that very fact. Tiny cross-stitches of faded pink and blue outlining two hearts over a simple house. _Love was not put in your heart to stay._ Bo doesn't need to read each word to know what's sewn there. It's the same piece of craftwork that hung over Jesse and Lavinia's bed all those years ago. Most of the time he saw it when he was cuddled warmly into his aunt's lap, her weathered hand patting his cheek or pushing through his hair in an attempt to settle him after he'd done his penance with the strap. Before he knew his letters she'd read it to him; later he'd stare at it over her shoulder and kind of mumble the words to himself. _Love isn't love 'til you give it away._

Bo hasn't seen it in years, never really thought about when it came off the wall that belonged to Jesse alone once Lavinia was gone. Maybe it was too hard to look at after a while or maybe Jesse just wanted plain white nothingness. In any case he never figured on seeing it again and isn't ready to think about what it's doing on a wall in a room that Jesse's so happy to have seen Luke build.

"Didn't he do a fine job?" the oldster says as he bustles heavily up behind them, nudging to get them inside. Daisy goes easily enough, a sad half-smile curling up on her lips, but Bo just plasters himself up against the smooth whiteness of what's left of their main hallway to let his kin pass. He concentrates so intently on his objective to never enter that room that he only halfway hears their uncle bragging about the fine craftsmanship that made a bedroom out of a space that used to house not much of anything at all.

"Ain't all the way done," Luke mumbles from behind him, half embarrassed. Maybe at the attention he's getting, or the imperfect state of the room, or the fact that there's a room there at all that Luke seems to have built for reasons that Bo can already tell he doesn't want to know. "I still got to do the wainscoting."

Daisy gets caught up in that, in how it should be white, not wood grain. And the quilt should match the sheets and aren't those curtains just lovely, but maybe Luke should let her clean them for him. They're just a bit yellowed, but it's nothing that a little bleach won't help. Plus, he needs an area rug somewhere in the middle to make the room look warm and cozy.

"This'll be Luke and Hannah's room," Jesse explains to Bo, then looks past him. Half fondness, half frustration in the tight smile that's partially hidden by beard. The way he's looked at Luke most of their lives. "If he ever gets around to setting a date."

* * *

Bo, to his credit, doesn't have much of a reaction to hearing that Luke's engaged. Oh, he turns his head, bites his lips, blinks once or twice then gives the tiniest of brave nods, but all of that is seen only by Luke. By the time his younger cousin turns back to Jesse and Daisy – who are still fussing foolishly over a room, damn it, a room, what a stupid thing to get so excited over, what a stupid thing for him to have built in the first place – his expression is flat. Not normal, normal Bo would be grinning like it was the first day of summer vacation, because Bo always grinned like that. (Even on the first day of school.) But flat is better than hurt, and no one's really looking at Bo anyway. No one but Luke.

Later, after a couple of hours of sitting in the living room watching the light fade, listening to the radio and pointedly not talking about Daisy and L.D. or how strange it is to have all four Dukes in one place again, someone declares it bedtime and they take turns in the bathroom, then crawl off to their own corners. Just about.

Luke stands in the doorway to their old bedroom with his shoulder resting on the frame, watches Bo go past the first twin bed to the second. The one Bo slept in for the better part of twenty years and it's no surprise when he sits down on the foot of it and starts tugging at his left boot. Aside from the fancy leather, all design and no substance, this could be any night from three years ago. Except that it's not.

"What?" Bo says when he realizes that he's being stared at. "Come on, Luke, close the door." Because Daisy's back in the house and there are rules about not getting undressed where the wrong set of cousins might accidentally see each other. Except Luke figures that Daisy's not coming back out tonight and Jesse's not going to get too worried over rules that are left over from when they were all going through puberty at roughly the same time.

"I don't sleep in here no more." It's meant to be an explanation, simple statement of fact. To abolish any confusion about why he's not coming any closer, why he's resolutely not crossing the threshold. Bo's lips fold into his mouth again and he looks just as young as he ever did, biting his lips when he didn't want a whipping but knew there was no way out of it.

"All right," Bo answers him back, as if saying the words will make it true. Like it'll take away the way his eyes won't meet Luke's, the way his hand runs restlessly up and down on his own leg. Patting himself, a little rub to take away what stings, but he's not a toddler that's stumbled and scraped a knee. What hurts him isn't on the surface.

"Daisy, you remember how she always wanted a parlor." Absent nod from Bo, his eyes still resting somewhere over toward the window. "That was how I got the idea. I kind of figured I'd build her one, maybe." To fill the time he used to spend with Bo and the General, kicking up dust and disturbing the peace of lawmen throughout Hazzard. To get Jesse off his back about how he had to do something useful with himself instead of snapping at his frazzled family. "Then she got married and left but I always figured she'd be back." Just not like this. Not looking like a scolded and spooked pup, eyes red and low, hair a frazzled tangle of knots that try to hide the splotches on her face. Maybe he shouldn't be trying to have this conversation with Bo when all either one of them wants to do is bloody L.D.'s nose for him. Then again, fighting always has been one of their better skills. "But you know, with L.D. and with kids. I didn't want no kids in the same room with me, so I started building that room out there. For Daisy's family." For Jesse's pseudo-grandchildren.

A nod, silence so thick around him that Luke can hardly stand to breathe it in. Funny how he used to complain about Bo talking too much and now he reckons his ears just about hurt from trying so hard to hear anything but the echoes of his own words. On the ragged edge of begging for any kind of an interruption, but none comes.

"And then I met Hannah. She's—"

"Luke." Quiet, the protest, when it finally comes. "I ain't got to hear about Hannah."

Well, good luck with that one. "She's coming to dinner tomorrow. It ain't like you can avoid her."

Shrug from Bo, eyes finally up to meet Luke's and they're empty. No tears, but none of their usual gleam, either. Just lifeless, surrender. Like a man who is watching the water rise right up over his head.

"She's—" nothing special, he wants to say. Just a girl, pretty enough in her own way. Quiet, smart, the right size to fit into the crook of his arm. All the things he would have told Bo about any girl he dated years ago, but they have rules now. "Not from here, but she's a nice girl. A teacher."

Bo's lip twists up into a sad little curl of a smile. "Never would have figured you to want a teacher."

No, school hadn't ever been his favorite place and teachers, well, most of them hadn't wanted him around any more than he'd wanted to be there. He reckons all those school lunches that were about as tasty as a sheet of cardboard were his teachers' favorite half hour of day, when it was someone else's turn to look out for Luke Duke.

"If you was here," is some sort of a peace offering or effort to make Bo feel better, but those words alone go a long way toward making it worse. "She never would have looked at me twice."

Bo snorts and looks away again.

So he leaves out the part where if Bo had been here, Luke would never have looked at _her_ twice.

_(They weren't anything more than kids then. Fumbling, foolish, just growing into their bodies. Rolling around on the dew-wet grass, smelling of wild scallions and fresh turned dirt, filthy knees and hard elbows catching each other in soft places. Giggles as bright as the summer sunshine as they pushed and shoved at each other, fingers knotted together, arms out to the sides, leaving their bodies to do the pinning._

_Just another wrestling match between teenaged cousins trying to prove their strength.  
_

_Luke had him, knew he did. Always had; Bo was so busy growing tall that he hadn't gotten time to form muscles yet. But he was wily and determined and he usually did give Luke a good run for his money, just like he was right now. Pressed down into the cool dampness of the ground, almost all of Luke's weight keeping him there but Bo never gave up. Wriggling and struggling and rubbing. Hips grinding up, a moan that could have been pain but wasn't._

_Felt good;_ damn _, it felt right, just a little more and it would be—_

_No. Heart pounding like he'd just run from the blast of a shotgun, and maybe that wasn't too far off the mark. It wasn't good, it wasn't right and he wasn't supposed to be rolling his own hips right back down against Bo, wasn't supposed to feel his stomach tightening with anticipation. He was, as he had been told so many times since the age of five, old enough to know better. Smart enough to roll off Bo, but not committed enough to move away when Bo came with him, rolling right over to take top. To play at pinning Luke's hands up by his ears though they both knew (if either of them had room in their brains to think) he could get free if he really wanted to. Bo's body grinding into his now, chests rubbing together, hips below that and jeans scraping against each other loud enough to wake the sleeping and bring the law on the run._

_His head scrambling to figure where Jesse and Daisy might have been, how likely they were to show up over here on the far side of the barn where farmyard turned into pasture, how likely he really was to hear the too-close blast of the old shotgun. Out in the open with nothing but grass below and clouds spread thinly across a blue sky above, a rail fence on one side and a rickety barn on the other. Luke was trying to figure whether they were anything like safe here and it was somewhere in that moment that the kiss came._

_Out of nowhere, Bo's lips on his. Eager and hungry, greedy for more. Tasting like hotdogs, sloppy, wet, chaotic and nothing like he'd ever expect from any girl, but the kiss was too young to be ashamed of itself, too earnest in its need to have a worry in the world._

_Bo's hips rocking down and asking for more without thought, nothing more than basic want. His breath tickling against Luke's cheek as it came in short, wispy puffs from his nose, his eyes closed and just feeling it. Luke's body shuddering without his permission, his hips arcing up to meet in the middle and in that second it became as much Luke's fault as Bo's. Shared blame, a dual whipping and none of that was half as important as his hand coming free of Bo's grasp, gripping shoulder, sliding roughly along the fabric of the half-open shirt to find his cousin's chest and belly. Kiss broke with a needy little breath from Bo, hips lifting off Luke's just enough to make room, and there was Bo's old, beat up belt buckle. Cool metal under his fingers where everything between them was hot, and Luke would have been perfectly content to pass it by, to cup Bo through the layer of denim, but hands in his way, the roll and tilt as Bo fell away from him to claw at his own belt and jeans, getting them far enough open for Luke's hand to get inside._

_Content then, to roll back to where he'd been, to be on top and thrust against the hand around him, off rhythm until Bo's frantic fifteen-year-old's body and brain caught up with each other. Figured out how much to push and when to give and Luke told himself he was just doing the kid a favor. That he remembered this particular young desperation, and when they had to face each other at bedtime he'd tell Bo just that._

Don't worry about it, coz—it happens to all of us.

_Until Bo's curious hand found its way down Luke's chest, moving too fast and not doing a thing for him but it made its way to the bulge in his jeans. Palming and rubbing right through the denim – zipper in the way, could feel it scrape against him through the thin layer of boxers in between – too firm then too soft. No sense of how to do it right, but Luke's body wasn't more than a couple years older than Bo's and it knew what it wanted._

_Stopping what they'd been doing just long enough to unhook his own belt and pop the button on his jeans – simple physics explained how easily his zipper slid – and then back to rocking, grinding, Bo's hand rubbing at him through the cloth of his boxers. Not much better than it had been but it was good enough – particularly when the kiss came back from wherever it had gotten lost – for him to forget where he was and what he shouldn't have been doing. Rhythm still a mess between them, panting when the kiss broke again, little sounds from Bo that could have been complaints, but they weren't._

" _Luke," breathed as hot as the sun in his ear, blonde hair brushing against his face, what skin Luke could see flushed a deep pink. Rubbing, heat everywhere, vulnerable shudder from Bo and Luke let his free arm find shoulder, tangle into that mop of blonde hair; that was all it took. Bo gasping as his body tightened down over Luke's and it shouldn't have been enough. Bo's hand was clumsy and not even in the right place anymore. All Luke could figure was that it was watching Bo get off that sprung the coil in his belly, tightening down until his own release followed right after his cousin's._

_He was a fool, he knew it in that moment and never stopped knowing it afterwards. Still, he held on when Bo collapsed onto his chest, let his fingers tangle lightly in the too-long, thick curls that clung, sweat-tight, to Bo's neck. Waited for that young body over his to calm down, then accepted the kiss that followed like a natural course of events._

" _Come on, we can't lie here all day," was all he said after they'd gotten rebuttoned and rezipped, and he'd dragged his tired kid of a cousin back to his feet.)_

"I'm sure she's a nice girl," Bo concedes on the subject of Luke's fiancée. Still staring at the window that's always been their secret escape. Teenaged nights when they could as easily have walked out their own front door, but the window offered more thrill; young adult afternoons with the sheriff and the commissioner hot on their heels. Now it seems that Bo would like to climb out on his own to get away from Luke, from the closeness of family, from things he might rather he hadn't done and feelings he probably wishes he'd never had.

"It's what we said we'd do, Bo." Find nice girls; try to settle down like the good boys their uncle raised them to be.

Not that it's what he wanted; none of this is what he wanted. Hannah's a perfectly nice girl, precisely the sort that Hazzard would expect him to settle down with. Smart but not crafty, sweet but firm when she needs to be. Good with children, because what teacher wouldn't be? Pleasant enough to look at, if not precisely pretty. The girl he's supposed to have been searching for his entire life, and now that he's got her he can't think of even one good thing to say about her to Bo.

He settled with her because he was lonely, and whose fault is that? His, mostly, he was at the heart of Bo going off to NASCAR. (But Bo wasn't really supposed to go. Not when all the chips were down and the hands had been played. Sure, they'd worked themselves into a corner that there was no good way out of, but Bo was supposed to want to stay more than any of the alternatives.) He was lonely and Hannah was perfectly willing to fill in as best she could. The town already loves her and they get plenty excited to see the Duke boy and the new girl walking through the square together, licking sticky ice cream cones in the Georgia heat. _Look who has tamed Luke Duke_ , they mumble. _Their babies will have such pretty eyes._ Because Hannah's are just shy of brown and not quite yellow, sort of a golden amber. Her best feature, just like Luke's blue eyes are his and if neither of them has any other fine genes, at least they've got that. Which the town clearly wants them to pass on to a new generation.

She's good with kids, she likes them and wants to have a few of her own. She dotes on Jesse, who all but preens under the attention, so the match between the schoolteacher and the patriarch is made in heaven. Luke's just caught in the middle.

"Luke." Bo's not looking out the window anymore, his head has snapped around and he's staring right at Luke. Eyes with a mean glitter like a snake that's been poked with a stick one too many times. "You said you don't sleep in here no more, right?" Talking a little louder than can be safely contained in the four walls of their room; some of it echoes out into the rest of the house. But then Bo's been gone long enough now, living in hotels and RVs with other men that have left their families behind to drive the circuit. May even be half deaf from engine noise. Definitely out of practice for behaving himself in Jesse Duke's house. "Then go on to your own bed. I'm tired."

There are things he'd like to say and still others he probably ought to say. But he nods his head and pushes himself off the doorframe. Grabs the knob and closes Bo on the other side of the door with a quiet click.

Some things don't really need to be said.


	3. Chapter 3

He figures it’s his own fault.  He’s the one who came here, who stayed.  Who let himself be talked into sticking around for longer than he thought was wise.  Who let himself get pulled out of his regular life, which has just enough routine and hassle in it to keep him focused on NASCAR and not much else.  Who let himself get dragged right back here into the mess that has always been Hazzard.

The morning comes too brightly through the filter of dust on his old window with its flimsy curtains and utter lack of a shade.  Never needed one when they were kids; out in the barn before dawn was the rule for the Duke boys, and if he ever forgot it, Luke had always been there to shake his shoulder and remind him that the chores wouldn’t do themselves.  Breakfast would taste better after the work got done.  That was Lavinia’s mantra and Luke took over saying it after she was gone.  And stealing his covers or shoving him hard enough to make him roll right out of the bed.  Now that Bo’s got the room to himself and is a guest in his own house, he’s been left to sleep late but the window and the sun seem to have conspired to undo all of his family’s kindness. 

He pulls himself out of bed anyway, realizing only now that the duffle bag that he packed for this trip is still in the General’s trunk.  He scavenges in the closet and finds it somewhat roomy compared to the way he remembers it.  While the rest of the house seems to have gotten smaller since he left, the closet has grown.  He figures Luke’s clothes must have moved out right along with his cousin.  Into Luke and Hannah’s room.  Funny to find himself brimming with disdain for a part of the house he lived in for most of his life.

Some of Bo’s worst clothes are still this closet, though.  Jeans rubbed threadbare in a few unfortunate places, with grass stains coloring the knees as souvenirs of past wrestling matches with Luke.  An old yellow shirt with tears near the seams like halfway faded memories that he doesn’t want to lose.  He gets dressed in those clothes that were in bad enough shape that he didn’t see fit to take them with him when he left, because it’s just the farm, and the only people he’ll come in contact with this morning are the family that’s already seen him ragged and worn.

They’re all in the kitchen, Daisy making the same show of fussing with frying pans that she did yesterday in his apartment in Mooresville, her hair up in a tight ponytail that makes her look harassed even before he takes into account the shine on her flushed cheeks.  Jesse’s playing at reading his newspaper but he’s really watching Daisy with eyes that seem to have aged overnight.  Or maybe he didn’t really pay enough attention to his uncle yesterday, maybe he never has looked at Jesse with any kind of a critical eye.  Same overalls he’s always worn, same red handkerchief all but falling out of his back pocket, same long johns sticking out from the sleeves of what’s probably a newer white shirt.  That’s the one thing the old man’s been willing to indulge himself with a new one of every now and again – a simple cotton shirt.  His hair’s not a lot whiter and there are only a few more wrinkles than he remembers, but still there’s something about Jesse that isn’t what it used to be.  Maybe it’s the slump of his shoulders, maybe it’s the width of his knuckles and twist of his fingers that are curled loosely around his paper.  Maybe it’s heavy work and light sleep sneaking up to overtake the old man.

Luke’s sitting in the same chair he ever has, with hair sticking to the sweat on his forehead in odd clumps and sipping his coffee then sucking in a deep breath to try to cool what he’s just burned.  Back when they shared the morning chores, Bo always figured Luke was a fool to speed through them when he knew the coffee would be too hot to drink unless he took his time.  But getting Luke Duke to take anything slow and easy has always been about like expecting a cow to lay eggs. 

Good mornings get said, Bo gets laughed at for asking what chores still need to be done.

“You ain’t changed none,” Jesse mumbles, but they all know that’s not true.  He’s accustomed to getting up a bit later now, to a routine of running on a treadmill instead of milking a goat, to meeting with sponsors and reporters, to smiling for cameras even on those days when he can’t muster a single happy thought.  He’s given up everything that seemed unimportant in his childhood in exchange for the one thing he ever figured he really wanted to do.  Racing was everything to him until it became the only thing he had.  Now he can’t help feeling that he’s been driving his life away.  He’s changed plenty.

And apparently he’s gotten up too late to do chores today.

He stands next to the table uselessly until Daisy reminds him that the plates are in the cabinet over the sink and Luke snickers at her for being so unsubtle, or maybe at Bo for being lazy.  Which he’s not, he’s just out of practice, and whose fault is that?  It was Luke’s fine plan that got him shipped off to NASCAR.  Bo got the circuit and the General (and freedom when Boss Hogg agreed to waive the last five years of his probation), while Luke got the farm.  It was about as fair and even as any secret divorce could be.

Bo manages to set the table without incident and relearns the rhythm of breakfast, including dropping his chin and listening to the blessing before digging into his food, with its lingering flavor of heartbreak.  Using a fork, actually sitting at a table, which is far more civilized than he is in his own apartment.  Next to Luke, managing to occupy a small space without bumping elbows, drinking fresh, sweet milk instead of the flavorless, off-white liquid that comes in a carton marked ‘milk’ at the Stop’n Go in Mooresville.  He’s finally feeling halfway relaxed when Luke makes a big show of stretching, arms spread wide behind him, then lets the left one come up to cork Bo on the back of the head.

“Luke,” he complains, gets a smirk from the offender and a smile from Daisy.  Jesse’s finger’s about to start wagging until Luke reminds them all that he and Bo have some crawdad fishing to do.

It’s his fault, he reminds himself, that he’s about to spend an endless morning in the sole company of his cousin, who seems dead set on breaking all the rules they made between them.  Inviting him to stay longer than the day visits they’ve previously agreed on, with an urgency to tell Bo all about his great love and impending marriage.  (And maybe that’s not fair.  Luke hasn’t said that this Hannah girl is his great love, or even that he loves her at all.  Maybe she’s just his great like.)

They make short work of gathering the traps out of the barn and heading down to Zack’s Landing in the General – Luke leans back in the passenger seat and closes his eyes as though the car is his long lost lover, and maybe that’s even halfway true – then bartering themselves into a rowboat without a motor.  They set off on the still, clear waters, making their way through the lily pads and swamp grass up to the north end where the creek feeds in, then dump the traps out with a splash.  Nothing to do for hours now but row lazily around in circles and wait for the crawdads to get themselves caught.  Bo braces himself to hear more about the wonder that is Hannah.

But his cousin’s perfectly content to sprawl out on the floatation cushions in the bow of the boat and close his eyes as though he’s on a sandy beach trying to get tan.  Bo is left to sit at the stern and squint at the sun glinting brightly off the water.  To let his mind drift over where he ought to be, where he wants to be, and where he’s been.  To remember things he wishes he could forget.

_(Luke ran off to the Marines.  Not right after they’d wrestled in the grass, but within a few weeks.  Bo never was sure how much of it might have been Jesse’s doing.  It had only been a few months since Luke had graduated high school and he wasn’t even quite eighteen, but he’d always been a handful and in his final year of school he’d caused plenty of trouble.  Good natured, though his teachers and the administration didn’t see it that way, and he was lucky to graduate before he got expelled.  So it might have been decided well before that day in the grass.  By an uncle at wit’s end or by Luke trying to grow himself up.  Bo never knew._

_All he could be sure about was that he’d spent the weeks after that wrestling match working himself up to rolling around in the grass with Luke again.  They hadn’t ever talked about it and he didn’t figure talking would help, anyway.  Doing was enough, it was everything and all he needed was a safe place and enough time.  He just about figured out an excuse to get them sent to work the fence line on the rim of the south forty where the corn had grown high enough to hide whatever they might get up to, when Luke announced at the dinner table that he was off for a hitch in the Marines come Saturday._

_Daisy did plenty of loud gasping and crying and protesting and otherwise making a spectacle of herself for them all.  Jesse nodded and slipped an arm around the girl, because he’d known what was coming all along.  Bo just stared at the ugly red and white tablecloth they’d had back then, taste of fried chicken going rancid on his tongue, and waited for the words to have any meaning at all.  Which left no room at all for worrying about how he felt.  By the time the shock wore off it was Saturday morning after a sleepless Friday night and he’d settled on being proud of Luke because he didn’t really have any other choice.  His cousin was about to be gone farther than Bo could even imagine and what was he supposed to do?  Tell him no, you can’t go; I was planning on rolling around with you between the corn stalks?_

_So he settled on proud and he waited until the second half of morning chores, after Jesse had collected the eggs and headed back to the house.  Shoved Luke then because even if he was proud there was still some part of him that wanted to demand what his cousin had been thinking, joining up with the_ Marines _of all things, and why he hadn’t said something sooner.  Shoved him a second time when Luke tried to act like the first shove wasn’t anything to take seriously, shoved him a third time to get him up against the wall, then he kissed him.  Reckless as anything, heart pounding in his ears loud enough scare the livestock and bring their uncle back in at a quick waddle. A kiss like that wrestling match they never got to have, messy and dirty, the kind of thing that would take a good bit of scrubbing and elbow grease to wash off.  Excited and sad and frustrated – it took him a minute and then another minute after that to realize that it was just him doing all of it.  Luke wasn’t kissing back._

_He started to pull away, caught between shame and anger.  Not looking at Luke, which took quite a bit of effort considering how close they were and that was why he didn’t see it coming, didn’t know anything about it until there was a hand in his hair, warm and the width of it cupping back of his head.  Firm, pulling him back, Luke’s head tipping slightly to the right and there it was.  Open mouth, tongues meeting in the middle, fading flavor of minty toothpaste.  Chickens squawking at their feet and he really should have been worried about Uncle Jesse or Daisy; heck, even Rosco could easily have shown up at the door of their barn, claiming to be looking for illegal liquor to confiscate._

_He should have been thinking about his backside that never did care for being whipped, but there was no room in his head for that, not when Luke’s hand slid from his hair to his face, thumb stroking along his cheekbone, once then twice before it pushed him back.  Not roughly but firm enough to make him step away, to give Luke the room he needed to get off the wall.  To act like he was going to go right back to spreading straw in the goats’ pen, and Bo caught his wrist.  Quick hug, perfectly brotherly and a fine way to say goodbye before he let Luke go back to work.  Bo didn’t do his share, Luke didn’t say a word about it and when they headed back to the house, Luke draped an arm across his shoulders.  Breakfast got eaten, Luke picked up the loosely packed duffle bag that was all he was allowed to take with him, and walked out the door.  Jesse followed, Bo heard the old work truck’s engine growl against being started, cough then catch, and Luke was gone._

_He wasn’t sure what to do with himself after that.  Jesse gave him extra chores to make up for the ones Luke wasn’t doing, Daisy made him double chocolate cookies to snack on when he got done.  School started up again in September, with football and cheerleaders and homecoming.  Dances and parties and girls.  Short skirts and long legs, tight sweaters that barely stretched across big chests and the girls were plenty attractive.  Soft, sweet, mostly quiet and they liked him.  He liked them right back; they were fun, if not exactly exciting, to kiss and touch.  The memory of rolling on the ground with Luke was there like an echo in his mind, keeping him from wanting to get too close to any of the sweet little darlings, but you couldn’t kiss a memory and Luke wasn’t anywhere he could get to.  Each girl he dated stood ready to go just a little further than the last and somewhere around the time that Luke’s letter arrived at the farmhouse with its little dissertation about whether or not he ought to get engaged to some girl named Candy-something that he’d met during basic training, Betty-Ann Hennessy had let him get his hand all the way up her skirt._

_It was the summer after Luke left that he and Susie Coughlan settled onto the backside of her daddy’s haystack and slowly stripped each other’s clothes off.  She liked the way he kissed – he reckoned he probably ought to thank Luke for teaching him how – and he liked the way she urged him on with her rocking hips and happy moans.  When they were done, they both liked cuddling in the hay until her father showed up with a shotgun full of salt pellets.  By the time he got home, the story of his escapades had beaten him there, and Jesse was waiting with a shaking head and an offer to whip him.  It was perfectly normal and perfectly fine and it was the kind of reputation that could safely follow him through the halls of the school.  Another Duke boy had come of age._

_Girls were there and Luke was not, so he took what was available to him and forgot all about what he couldn’t have._

_Mostly, anyway.)_

The crawdads are pretty quick to let themselves be caught (though not as quick as the mosquitoes are to make a meal of a pair of farm boys caught out in a swamp) so it’s hardly past noon when Luke rows them back to where the General is parked.  Gives Zack a half dozen crawdads in exchange for the boat, and they take the rest home.  The afternoon is spent digging the critters out of their shells, peeling and cutting potatoes to Daisy’s specifications, tasting small sips of Jesse’s broth to determine the correct salt-to-cayenne pepper ratio, and moving picnic tables from the barn to the lawn.  By the time that’s done and Daisy’s swatted him on the head and told him to go change into some decent clothes, there are guests starting to arrive.  Rosco, Cooter, Enos with his shy little smile and kiss for Daisy’s cheek, and then, finally, Luke goes off in the pickup to get Hannah.

* * *

 

Bo can’t stand her.  Oh, he kisses her cheek, offers up a smile that’s all teeth.  Points out that he’s the pretty Duke boy and pretends at threatening to take the girl away from Luke, but it’s all a show.  One that could use a better actor.

Not that Hannah notices.  She’s too busy taking in the big, the blonde, the sheer noisiness of Bo.  (And he’s really only at about half-volume today.  Not a yeehaw to be uttered, because he’s not really happy.  But Hannah doesn’t know any better.)  Trying to figure out, no doubt, how the two Duke boys could come from the same stock when one is broad and blonde and beautiful, and the other one is Luke.

Then again, there’s that silly smile of hers, cheeks puffed like a chipmunk’s, and the way she pats Bo’s arm.  She may not know Bo at all, but she’s already treating him like one of her students and that’s just about right. 

Hannah is Hazzard’s first kindergarten teacher.

If Bo had been here when she moved into town, Luke figures he would have met her sooner.  She goes to the Methodist Church of Hazzard, same as the Dukes have for generations, and Bo always did have a radar for a new girl in the pews.  The dark curls that fall to her shoulders, her plain blue Sunday dresses that make her look about as interesting as a tube of toothpaste, the glasses that hide her eyes, none of these caught Luke’s attention, but she still would have gotten Bo to look twice.  Just because Bo looks twice at anything with boobs, and Hannah’s definitely got those. 

Not that it matters now.  Bo doesn’t care for her boobs or any other part of her, and Luke can’t blame him.  But it’s not her fault; none of this is Hannah’s fault.

 

 

* * *

 

He feels kind of justified in grumbling about the unfairness of it, even if there’s no one around to hear his perfectly logical complaints.  The picnic is breaking up – Enos is back on duty, Rosco is ijiting and fidgeting, holding his stomach and saying something about Jesse Duke’s cooking killing ten ordinary men, while climbing into his battered cruiser that creaks and crunches as he drives away.  Cooter shakes his head and mumbles something about that vehicle being brand new just last Monday.  Daisy yawns behind her hand and Jesse gives several broad hints that the party is over. Luke and Hannah head for the pickup, her tiny hand engulfed in his wide one, and Cooter sits back like he plans to stay all night.  Jesse takes Daisy in to bed and leaves Bo to handle the dirty dishes and the guest who doesn’t take hints.  Funny how one leads to the other – when Bo suggests he could use some help cleaning up, Cooter suddenly realizes that he has a watch on his arm.   Funny how it has suddenly gotten late; he’d like to help Bo, but old man Murphy’s gonna be at the garage at sunup because his station wagon’s got the vapors again.  A yawn and a stretch and… it’s good, Bo thinks, listening to the chains and pulley jingle when the wrecker pulls off the Duke property and onto the road out front, to know that some things will never change.

He has brought all the leftover food back into the house and squirreled it away into the refrigerator, dirty dishes are in the sink left to soak (or to wait for Luke, because Bo reckons his cousin needs to do some of the work, or at least wash his own girlfriend’s plate) when he decides to take to the porch steps and watch fireflies dart across the farmyard.  He’s not waiting for Luke to get back; he keeps telling himself that.  He’s just sitting on the steps, relaxing, letting the remnant flavor of crawdads and cheap beer settle on his tongue, watching time pass and wondering what on earth is taking Luke so long.  He’s gotten around to considering the possibility that Hannah lives in Siberia when the floorboards behind him creak and groan under heavy feet. Jesse is on his way out.

“How’s Daisy?” he mumbles as the old man closes the door quietly behind him then drifts over to his favorite corner and the swing that has hung there as long as Bo can remember.  There are still a couple of smallish eye-hooks just to the right of where Jesse settles that he’s been told used to hold up his baby swing when he first came to live here on the farm.  _Only way to keep you quiet was to keep you moving_ , Lavinia used to say.  _And even that didn’t work but half the time_ , Luke would add with his smug little smirk. 

“Daisy’s fine,” Jesse answers, his tone rising for that second word just as sarcastically as it always did when he and Luke had found themselves in jail and their uncle would tell them that it was just _fine_ that he was using the mortgage money to bail them out.  It makes Bo look over his left shoulder to try to see the old man’s face in the spillover from the overhead light in the kitchen.

“I reckon she’s better off without that L.D.,” Bo concludes.

Steely glare – _wrong answer, Bo_ – and he doesn’t even have the first idea why.  He’s not the one who abandoned Daisy, he’s the one that was there for her in her hour of need.  Brought her home because she was scared to face Jesse alone, and even Luke has admitted that it was the right thing for him to do.

“Anything that breaks up a family – even one as small as two people – ain’t never a good thing,” Jesse informs him in that tone that reminds him that he’s not to old to be whipped.  “And anything that hurts your cousin like this ain’t a good thing, neither.”

“Yes, sir.”  He’d like to point out that Daisy’s real family is here in Hazzard and that there was no reason for her to go off with L.D. in the first place, but he can’t.  Because their little family of four got broken up before L.D. ever showed up.  Bo left first.

He turns back to stare out into the farmyard that’s lit only by a sliver of moon and the fireflies, but Bo doesn’t need to see it to know what’s out there.  Trees, with their raised roots that can trip a man that isn’t paying attention, that old rope swing, dirt and pebbles, chickens.  The General, parked in his old spot under the maple canopy, an oil stain where the pickup sat until Luke climbed into it with Hannah and drove off.  Now he figures it must be leaving a heck of a stain in Hannah’s driveway, wherever that is, what with how long it’s been over there.

“You don’t like Hannah,” Jesse observes, the same as he’d comment on the number of stars in the sky.  Sure can see a bunch of ‘em tonight – and you don’t like the woman your cousin has proposed to marry.

“There ain’t nothing wrong with her,” is meant to be some kind of denial, never mind that it comes out sounding like an accusation.  Like if only Bo could find her flaws (and he can, he’s just not sure how much it matters if he does) he would have no problem with her.  “I just,” _didn’t know anything about her until I got here and though that fact fits tidily with the rules me and Luke agreed to when we got this here divorce that you don’t know anything about, I don’t like it none, getting surprised like this._   But he can’t say that.  It’s nothing Jesse stands ready to hear and furthermore, it’s not even true.  It’s not the surprise that bothers him, it’s Hannah’s claim on Luke.  “I’m surprised to see Luke settling down, is all.”

“Surprised.”  Bo rests back against the steps, his elbows on the porch and wishes he were somewhere – anywhere – else.  Because he knows that sound, that incredulity in Jesse’s voice.  It reminds him of what he was too out of practice to recognize until this moment – this here is not a companionable moment between uncle and nephew, it’s a lecture waiting to happen.  “Surprised,” Jesse repeats, like he’s testing out the sound of it.  From all accounts within the tone of his voice, it’s not an agreeable word at all.  For either of them.  “You was _surprised_ to find Luke settling down.”

“It ain’t that I figured Luke wouldn’t ever settle down, Jesse.”  It was more that he didn’t want to think about it.  That he preferred to imagine Luke as lonely as he is.  Not that he has lacked for company on the NASCAR circuit, just that there’s been no one amongst the many girls he’s spent time with who can fill the hole that walking away from Hazzard – and Luke – has left in him.

“It’s just that you never figured he would, either.  Bo,” oh, this is going to be a beauty of a lecture, disguised as one of those educational life-lessons that Jesse reckons it’s time he learned.  “Maybe you think that things ain’t going to change while you’re away, or maybe you’re so busy at NASCAR that you lose track of home.  I know that you got them races and that weight training with that Buster—”

“Butch,” Bo corrects, realizes that he really shouldn’t have. He tries to remind himself that it’s his own fault.  For coming home, and more than that, for staying.  But it only halfway works and instead he finds himself remembering with fondness those days when he and Luke had perfect timing.  When they knew each other inside out and upside down.  Back then Luke would have known to come home right now to interrupt the speeding locomotive of a lecture that’s getting ready to run Bo down.

“Whatever – you got your training with that guy,” and Jesse doesn’t like Butch based on the fact that his name is just one more interruption in some fine wisdom that the old man’s trying to impart.  “You got to travel and do whatever you do,” by which he means getting with girls, most likely.  And Bo does that.  He’s got to do that to keep himself halfway sane. 

What Jesse doesn’t know about his supposed “free” time is the promotions, the sponsors, the formal dinners and meetings and events he has to attend.  The reporters with their fluffy hair, shiny suits, minty-fresh breath and the oversized microphones that are meant to intimidate him into responding to questions he’s got no answers for.  The hours of standing around and waiting through qualifying rounds, then more hours of standing around waiting through inspections and for races to begin.  “I know you’re busy,” Jesse concedes, even if he doesn’t have any idea about the details.  “But I reckon you could find your way home more often.  Then you wouldn’t have to be _surprised_ that your cousin’s getting serious about a girl that he’s been seeing for eighteen months.” 

 _It ain’t like that,_ he wants to say.  _I ain’t the one that made the rule about how often I could come home.  I ain’t even the one who sent me away._   Which had been – none of it had been as fair as it might have looked.  He got to go off the NASCAR, he got to keep the General.  Seemed like a little boy’s dream come true, and Luke probably came off as some kind of a self-sacrificing hero, giving up professional racing to take care of the old homestead while Bo got to go off and play.  But from the inside it was something else entirely.  It was Luke engineering to get him sent away, then getting surly after he was gone.  Making arbitrary rules and telling Bo that he should never come back for a full twenty-four hours in a row, how the two of them should never be alone together.  That they should see girls and try to do the right thing.  (The part about them never talking about the girls they see, that was Bo’s contribution.  Seemed smart at the time, but now he’s been caught unawares and he has to admit to not particularly caring for any part of it, from having to watch Hannah’s little fingers weaving through Luke’s hair a couple of hours ago to getting lectured right now.)  But Jesse doesn’t want to know all the details of the past, and Bo’s got no plans on telling him, not when all of this was to protect their uncle in the first place.

“I’d like to come home more often,” he says instead.  And thinks that even if Luke is not inclined to show up just in the nick of time like he used to, there’s always Rosco.  The sheriff ought to come barreling back onto the property with lights and sirens and bullhorns blaring, giving Bo an excuse to make a break for it.

“Bo,” his uncle interrupts, as though he expects an excuse to follow.  (And maybe that’s all Bo has to offer – excuses that are paper thin.)  “I reckon Daisy’s probably coming home for good.  At least, it looks like she’s going to be here for a while.  The whole family’s going to be here.  You need to come by more.”

“Yes, sir.”  Jesse outranks Luke, after all.  Jesse outranks everything they’ve ever done and any agreement the two of them could ever make. 

“Now, Luke,” the old timer goes on, as if he hasn’t heard Bo’s words.  It’s a full-blown lecture of the nature that even agreeing can’t interrupt.  Only an earthquake or tornado can stop it now.  “Since you left, he’s taken on all the responsibility of running this here farm.  He don’t hardly let me tend to my own fields.  And that ain’t your fault – he’s always been like that.  Working so he’ll forget he’s unhappy.”  Bo looks back over his shoulder again, gets raised eyebrows in response.  “You don’t figure Luke’s been unhappy?  Well, he has been.  He’s missed you since the moment you left here.”  (But whose fault is that?)  Bo goes back to staring out at the farmyard.  Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but he’d swear he sees a dim glow of headlights out there in the distance.  “Finding Hannah’s been good for him.  He relaxes some now, and every once in a while I even catch him smiling.”  Oh, that’s excellent news.  Hannah makes Luke smile.  Bo strains his ears in a valiant effort to catch the whine of the old pickup coming up the road, but he’s pretty sure that all he can hear is a mosquito doing laps around his ear.  He swats his own cheek to no avail – the droning comes around again.  “But he misses you.  Don’t you miss him?”

“Of course I miss him.  He’s _Luke_.”  His lifelong companion.

“Well, all right then.  It’s a lot easier for you to come to him than for him to get out to see you when he’s got to beg J.D. for permission.  You was lucky to get your probation waived.”  No, Luke handled that part, along with making all of Bo’s other arrangements for him.  Took care of him right good and proper and where is he when Bo really needs him?  Off somewhere with a girl. “You come home more often.”  Then again he’d swear that glow on the horizon is real, and that it’s getting brighter.  It can’t just be wishful thinking.  He’s been known to daydream, but never to hallucinate.  “It’ll be good for you and it’ll be good for Luke.”  Definitely getting brighter and there’s the truck’s engine.  Luke’s timing, he realizes, is as good as it ever was.  He’s showing up just as the lecture is ticking down.  “And you’ll get to know Hannah better.  You’ll like her in time.  She’s good people.  And she loves Luke.”  Which is a feat in itself.  Luke’s not easy to love, especially not right now when he’s pulling off the road and onto the patch of dirt that serves as their driveway just about fifteen seconds too late to be of any use.  The pickup drags to a stop with a squeal of protest; brakes on Duke vehicles are not used to being treated gently.

“Well, I reckon I’ll turn in,” Jesse says, hauling himself up to his feet.  Groaning and popping, but he still moves pretty quick.  “Good night,” he calls, heading through the screen door and leaving Bo behind.

 

 

* * *

 

He knows what it is, of course.  There are times and places that are inseparably tied together with their deeper meanings and unavoidable consequences.  On the porch coupled with after dinner means interrogation or a lecture.  Or both.  Used to mean a whipping, too, back in the days when the Duke boys were young enough to receive them or their uncle was spry enough to dole them out.  Though that time has passed, his backside remembers the feeling.

“Everything okay?” Luke asks when he gets to the bottom of the stairs.  When he has no choice, because he’s wasted every moment he can justify.  Driving to town real slow on the pretense of looking out for deer, parking out in front of the boarding house in that little hollow between the streetlights where only the thinnest glow survives the layer of dust on the pickup’s windows.  Talking at first, telling Hannah about Bo because now that she’s met him she wants to know.  Who he is and what he’s like and Luke’s told her most of these stories before, but now she has a reason to really pay attention to them.  She’s seen Bo’s face and maybe she’s begun to understand how he can get under a person’s skin and make himself at home.  How he can make a  man crazy enough to want to hit him, to hold him, to—  How it can be that almost every sentence Luke ever said to her in their first year of knowing each other began with “This one time, me and Bo…”

Some necking followed; it was inevitable.  Rosco, from his post under the maple at the corner of Elm and Church streets, probably chewing on Boss’s sickly sweet butterscotch candies and squinting with all his might, would be disappointed if he didn’t get the opportunity to give Flash a running commentary on a Duke boy conquest.  Then there was more talking and when Hannah asked if he wasn’t tired after such a long day and didn’t he have to get up before the rooster for farm chores, he knew he’d wasted as much time as he could.  He did all those gentlemanly things like getting out of the pickup first and coming around to hold her door for her, taking her hand as they walked up the path to the boardinghouse door, then seeing her in.  Kissed her and turned back to head for the truck and home.  Might have driven the long way, might have gone down by the pond to see how the moonlight was reflecting off the surface tonight and whether the mosquitoes were biting.

It was stupid, he knew it and there was no getting around it.  Trying to stay out long enough that maybe Bo would already be asleep when he got home.  Like when his cousin was a kid and Lavinia could compel the brat to go to bed even if Luke and Jesse still hadn’t gotten home from a fishing trip.  Silly to think it’d work now when it never even worked back then; Luke would stagger into their room, bone tired, smelling of fish and pond water, barely able to find the energy to pull off his boots jeans and crawl into bed.  He’d get his head on the pillow, be looking for the sheet to pull over himself and there Bo would be, crawling into bed with him, whispering questions about how many fish he’d caught or complaining about how Lavinia hadn’t let him lick batter off a spoon.  Nothing that couldn’t wait until morning when they were both allowed to be awake, but it didn’t matter.  Bo wanted his attention right then, and no one was allowed to get any rest until he had it.

The mosquitoes were most definitely biting and Bo would be waiting for him to get home.  There was no way around it, so he gave up his pointless diversions and drove the way he could, the way he really hadn’t since Bo left.  Quick and fearless, feeling the road rather than seeing it, letting the pickup sniff any danger along the way.  Didn’t take him any time at all to see the dim light from the bare bulb in the kitchen as it glared out through the open door to the porch, didn’t take him two glances to realize that while Bo was sitting on the steps waiting for him, his cousin wasn’t alone.  Jesse was lifting himself from the porch swing in the corner, making a beeline for the indoors.

“Fine,” Bo answers him now, as if he has not just been grilled like a hotdog at a church picnic.  “I reckon,” he adds, his forearm coming up to wipe across his forehead as though he’s been harvesting in the worst of September’s heat.  “It’s time I was getting back to Mooresville.”

“I thought,” comes out so quickly that Luke just about resents his own mouth.  He’s supposed to be the Duke boy that controls his tongue.  Big breath in, sighing it back out because he’s not going to fool anyone, not when the person he’s talking to is Bo.  Rubs his palms on his jeans as he stands there, facing his cousin in the leftover light from the kitchen.  “I thought you was going to stay a little longer.”

Uncle Jesse must have pulled out a lecture worthy of the worst days of their childhood to make Bo want to run off this fast.

Bo’s head tips up to see him; it’s not often that he’s the taller Duke boy.  Almost forgot how young Bo looks from this angle.  Innocent, downright pure, if a bit sad.  Lonely.  For all of a second and then there’s a firm nod of that blonde head, like Bo’s just made up his mind.  “Butch is gonna make it hard enough for me already.  I don’t need to help him out none.  Besides, Daisy’s all settled here, and that’s the only reason I came in the first place.”

* * *

Luke’s face betrays him in the same way it always has.  Aunt Lavinia used to smack him for the rolling his eyes and pressing his lips together, for that utterly impatient look about him that called everyone an idiot without Luke having to utter a word.

Except this time it’s not smirking superiority, it’s surprise.  Quickly followed up by anger, frustration, annoyance and then, unbelievably, sadness.  A sigh that tries to sound exasperated, then those lips flatten out, the arms come across Luke’s chest and he’s just plain old impassive Luke again.

“You’re doing a good job with the farm,” Bo says in some kind of effort to soften what he’s already said.  “And Hannah, she’s—” a nice girl.  That’s what’s supposed to follow.  She’s a good choice, she’ll make you happy.  Only Bo’s a Duke and he’s not allowed to lie.  He doesn’t like Hannah and he doesn’t much figure that she’ll make Luke anything at all, except respectable.  Maybe she’ll make him a father one day, too.  But Bo doesn’t want to talk about that so he lets his words die away into the muggy night air.

“I’m sorry, Bo,” Luke mumbles.

“No,” Bo snaps at him, a whisper more than a yell, but the feeling is the same.  The beginning of a fight that’s got to stay quiet.  “You ain’t.”  Luke can’t be sorry, not now, not when he’s engaged and ready to be married off to a girl that Bo can’t stand, not when they’ve already spent three years figuring out their own separate lives.  Not when there’s no way to take it all back and start over at the beginning.  “You’re the one that decided I should go off to NASCAR.  You’re the one that got me the contract and you’re the one that decided to stay here and do the right thing.  To make all the _sacrifices_ and get _married_ – well you got it Luke Duke.  You got what you was supposed to, so you can’t be sorry.”

Luke’s arms across his chest tighten, muscles in his forearms standing out below the rolled up sleeves of his shirt.  For a minute this threatens to turn into another farmyard brawl as a bookend to the one they had three years ago, when Jesse got out his shotgun and Bo tried to convince himself that he really did want to be with Diane Benson instead of Luke.  

Then it stops and Luke lowers his head.  Nods and looks at the ground.  Agreeing once again to sacrifice his own happiness to the greater good or whatever he tells himself he’s doing.

“I reckon,” Bo says, and it takes all the effort in the world to make it sound normal.  To stop his whispered accusations and just let it be, because there’s not really anything else he can do.  Luke may have decided that Bo should go off to NASCAR, but Bo’s the one who actually went, who rented himself an apartment with a view of Lake Norman because he thought it would remind him of home, then promptly drew all the curtains because it did just that.  He’s the one who stayed, with nothing more than an air mattress, a pot and two forks, even if he reckoned he was miserable; after a few weeks he opened those curtains again, and then bought himself a couch so he could enjoy his view.  Then came the table, the sailboat picture for his wall that had no meaning to him at all, but made the place look lived in.  Got himself some dishes, an easy chair and a bed big enough to fit him and settled in.  It’s his home now, and half the time he even likes it there.  He’ll like it there again as soon as he can get back into the routine that keeps him too busy to worry much about Hazzard.  “We ought to get to bed.  I got to drive in the morning and you got to let Jesse lecture you.  It’s your turn.”

Luke snorts and walks right up to him.  Offers him a hand up, then heads for the door.  Holds it open for Bo to pass through first and follows him into the house.  Turns right when Bo goes left, and he’s headed off to where that old formal porch used to be.  To his and Hannah’s room, leaving Bo to the one he used to share with Luke.  Bo reminds himself, one last time, that he’ll be fine once he gets back home.  To his other home.

The next morning, he’s packed the few things he brought with him and is ready to leave after breakfast.  Daisy catches him in the kitchen and throws her arms around his neck as thanks for bringing her home.  Jesse asks him to stay.  Luke doesn’t, but his cousin is the only one who walks him out the door.  Right up to the General, where Luke puts a hand on the passenger door, like he’s thinking over all the times he’s climbed through that window.  Maybe remembering the time he caught his jeans on the lock and Daisy made him stitch them up himself. 

He doesn’t say anything much.  Just drive safe and take care of yourself.  For the first time since Luke went off to the military, Bo doesn’t kiss him goodbye, just hugs him like he never wants to let him go.

Then he pulls himself free and slides into his side of the General.  Drives, because it’s the one thing he’s always been able to do.  Exhausted, hurt, sick as a dog, it doesn’t matter, he can always drive.

Even when the road rolls and blurs as he squints to see it through the tears in his eyes.


	4. Chapter 4

“Don’t let Luke there fool you.  He can mend his own clothes.”  That’s his girl cousin telling tales on him to his someday-wife.  This is what comes of having too many women in the house.

Hard to remember what it was like back when Lavinia was here.  Daisy was younger then, sure, but she already enjoyed a good excuse to gossip, and that’s pretty much what the women who gathered here in Lavinia’s day did.  When she passed away, the town’s ladies quit coming to sit on the porch with their needlework, and Daisy found herself outnumbered by men.  The girl got easier to handle then.  Mostly.

“He had to learn that in the Marines,” Daisy explains in a half whisper, as if Luke isn’t supposed to be overhearing her now.  “He can cook, too.  As long as all you want him to do is boil water.  Whatever they taught him about cooking in the Marines didn’t take.”  Girl doesn’t know the half of it and probably doesn’t want to, either.  The things they ate weren’t identifiable to begin with.  Cooking them over an open flame didn’t improve that any.

Hannah tips her head up to look over at him and her puffy cheeks wrap themselves around her smile, same as they always have.  “He’s blushing,” she announces, even though he most certainly is not.  He’s just sitting on the couch in his own living room, thinking back fondly on the early morning quiet of breakfast with those fat, sweet sausages that only Daisy has ever made well, the peaceful (if endless) sermon that followed at church. And trying to read a magazine article about the newest developments in glass-pack mufflers for high-performance vehicles, the same as he’d do any other Sunday afternoon.  It’s not his fault that the kitchen has been hijacked for what Daisy’s calling a “sewing circle.”  Even if there’s no circle and what the two women are doing resembles knitting quite a bit more than sewing.  What with there being yarn instead of thread and all. 

Daisy giggles and the daily newspaper rattles when Jesse lowers it far enough to peer across the living room from his easy chair in hopes of catching the spectacle of a red-faced nephew.  Luke reckons the oldster must get real disappointed, because he is absolutely not blushing.  He’s just reading his magazine with all due concentration.  And totally ignoring the conversation on the other side of the archway between kitchen and living room.

He can tolerate a little teasing, Luke figures, in the name of greater things.  Like the way Daisy’s stopped wearing her hair up in a severe ponytail every day, the way she’s quit carrying around tissues like a permanent accessory.  The dabs of makeup she’s started wearing and the smiles she offers from time to time, in between the chores she has taken up with a steadfast vigor.  Two weeks – it’s longer than she’s ever needed to get over a man, but then again, it’s a marriage that she mourning this time.  Probably more upset no longer properly being able to call herself Mrs. Southerland than losing old L.D. himself.   (And maybe that’s not fair.  He remembers the way she used to all but glow when she and L.D. first took to courting.  She loved the jerk well enough.)  Still, spending time with Hannah seems to be brightening her up and making her relax in her own home.  If, that is, this is going to be her home again.  That topic’s been tidily ignored.

“This is so much fun,” Hannah announces, shifting both knitting needles into her left hand and using the right to push those wire-rimmed glasses that she wears, not just for close work but all the time, back up from where they’ve slid down her nose.  “I’ve missed this.”

Luke can’t be faulted for the snort that escapes despite his best efforts to behave. Knitting – whatever it is that they’re knitting, because right now neither of them has anything more than the tiniest scrap of who-knows-what hanging at the end of their needles – has got to be just about the most boring way to spend an afternoon that he’s ever seen.  It’s got nothing on driving for hours over dusty roads, testing high-end engine parts over rough road and playing cat and mouse with the law.  (And he’s not out doing that now because he’s all domesticated and grown up and maybe he has no right to laugh at his future wife’s love of knitting.)

Jesse rattles his paper again. 

Daisy levels a look in his direction that promises all manner of retaliation.  Starch in his shorts, burns on his biscuits or just plain hijacking his girlfriend for the sole purpose of tormenting him.  Looks like that last option’s the winner.

“Don’t mind him, he ain’t never had a sensitive bone in his body,” she coos.  “Besides, I’ve missed having a lady friend to spend time with, too.”

Hannah’s a bit too starry-eyed to care about picking on Luke, though.  Enamored of Daisy and her knitting needles that click together in a rhythm twice as annoying as the hiccups Bo used to get just about every other day from eating too fast.

“When I was a girl, sewing circle used to be every Saturday,” Hannah says, her yellow-amber eyes staring out at nothing, the knitting needles going of their own accord and who knows what those stitches are going to come out like.  “It started as just my grandma and aunt and mom, plus me and Lauren, but after a time it grew and the neighbor ladies would come, too.  There’d be—”

“I thought you grew up in Pennsylvania,” Daisy interrupts and Luke notices that Jesse’s paper doesn’t rattle at her.  Seems like the kind of infraction that ought to at least lead to one eyeball making an appearance over the top of the front page, but it doesn’t.  (Then again, things have never been fair in this house.  Luke’s always been older, the one that Jesse expects to behave and to be the recipient of long and meaningful talks on how to set a better example.  Which makes it odd that he’s waited about two weeks to get his half of whatever lecture Jesse gave to Bo the night of the picnic, but it still hasn’t come.  The old timer’s been complaining lately of forgetfulness, and yet Luke reckons they’ll both be happier if he doesn’t go reminding his uncle that he’s half a lecture short of his quota.)

Hannah just smiles in that same fat-cheeked way for Daisy, and sets to giving the details of those sewing-circle days in her old hometown.  Grindstone, Pennsylvania, that Luke’s always teased her about, asking whether she’s got her nose to the grindstone (it might explain just why it’s so angular, but that’s not a nice thing for him to think about the girl he plans to marry someday) even if he knows that boys who grew up in glass towns named Hazzard have no room to throw stones. 

“Our house was always drafty,” Hannah tells Daisy.  “The one we lived in after my parents got divorced.”  Daisy blanches a bit at that D-word.  For a second only, then her face washes over with sympathy.  “It was my grandmother’s house, really, not ours.  But my mother and sister and me, we needed someplace to live and she and my grandfather had a big, stone house right in the middle of town.”  More sad looks from Daisy, as if being raised by grandparents is somehow worse than being raised by an uncle. “My mother always said that as soon as she got on her feet again she’d move us down south where it would always be warm.  She’d sit in grandma’s wicker rocker and tell Lauren and me about beaches and sand and the warm breezes of the south as she sewed.  She never did move down here,” Hannah reveals, and prattles out her whole sad story, one fit to match the Dukes’.  How her mother grew sick then sicker until she passed away before Hannah graduated high school.  Her father was long gone so her grandparents saw her to eighteen and then she had to get loans and scholarships to go to college.  Which meant the University of Pittsburgh because that was where she could get the best financial aid.  And then she got a student-teaching position right in the heart of Pittsburgh, but she kept looking for something better, something that would get her out of the icy and cramped one-bedroom apartment that she shared with another fledgling teacher.  “And then, when my Ed Psych professor passed notice of this job on to me, down in Hazzard, Georgia, it was like a dream come true.”

Daisy laughs openly at this one; still no newspaper rattling.  It’s enough to give a man a complex.  “Hazzard ain’t got no palm trees or beaches,” she points out.  “Just hot breezes in summer, cold in winter and nothing in between.”  Hannah’s been here long enough to know all that.  She says it’s warmer than Pennsylvania and he believes her, but come fall she still layers sweaters over turtlenecks, and half the time he gets overheated just looking at her. 

“That’s okay,” Hannah answers her and somehow manages to look shy as she says this next part.  Almost like she’s smitten by Daisy and maybe she is.  Daisy’s got a whole lot of brazen to offset Hannah’s reservations.  “I like the people here.”

Of all things, that gets a rattle out of the newspaper.  Makes Luke wish he had a beer to be sipping (not in Uncle Jesse’s living room on a Sunday, no sir) or popcorn to be munching on.  Anything to keep his mouth occupied so he wouldn’t be frowning.  Like he knows he is because when he looks up, Daisy’s giving him a mean look.  Accusing him of being rude or thoughtless.

“Most of them are real nice,” Daisy agrees, and Luke’s pretty sure he’s not part of ‘most.’  Probably just got himself lumped in with Boss Hogg and Rosco, at least for the moment.  Until the next time Daisy needs him to fetch a spice off a high shelf or lift a sack of potatoes.  Then he’ll be ‘sugar’ again.  “But I can’t believe you had sewing circles up north like that!”

“Oh, it isn’t _that_ different from here,” Hannah explains and she looks over to Luke as though he can corroborate her story, but half the things she’s told Daisy today are new to his ears, too.  Up until now he can’t swear that Hannah has said more than a few sentences about her childhood. “Just colder.”

“Well, I’m glad you moved down here, anyway,” Daisy puts in.  Luke goes back to his magazine, intent on letting the women’s talk stay between the women.  Figures he ought to actually learn a thing or two about glass pack mufflers.  Edelbrock cylinder heads and carburetors – things he used to dream about for the General and then work half a hundred odd jobs to earn the money to buy.  Now Bo’s got the car and can easily afford anything he might ever want to put in him just to make him run faster, and it doesn’t matter because the General never gets raced anymore.  Bo officially drives a Chevy because that’s who sponsors his team, and there are no local dirt track derbies that are going to allow a NASCAR driver to enter and compete against amateurs.  So the car is as well-kept as it’s ever been and as lonely as—

“It’s nice,” interrupts his thoughts.  Daisy’s voice, with that extra bit of brightness that has been her constant companion since she stopped the outright crying and opted instead for false cheer.  “That Luke found you.  Or you found him.  He ain’t never been one to settle down.  Chased off every girl that ever threatened to tame him.”  The newspaper rattles abruptly at that one.  Luke buries his nose ever more firmly in his magazine and Jesse clears his throat.  It’s as close to scolding his newly-heartbroken niece as the old man’s likely to come.  He probably figures that tales of Luke’s past will scare Hannah away, but it’s a silly concern.  Luke already tried to do that very thing back when she first took a shine to him.  “Well, mostly.  There was that one girl, Amy.  She dumped Luke before he could dump her.”

Amy.  She’s just a redheaded blur of a memory now, low voice full of sass in his ear, warm curve of her too-round breasts, taste of lipstick in the way she kissed him like she had a right to tell him how their relationship was going to go.  From here, looking back on it, he knows what she was and what she wasn’t.  Just about her best feature was that she wasn’t precisely feminine.

_(He came back home after three years of heat and sweat and endless hikes over sand and stones; came home from rules and uniforms complete with regulation length haircuts, from rank and file and C-rations of unrecognizable gray meats slathered in unrecognizable gray gravy, to find Bo a tall, beautiful, confident boy, trying to be a man._

_Who liked women.  Breakfast, lunch and dinner, snacks in between and then at midnight and for all of them, Bo wanted one girl after another._

_He’d built himself a life while Luke was gone, his own life that had nothing to do with his oldest cousin and it seemed to have worked out pretty well.  Football and pick up races, dances on Saturday night.  Shirts tight across broadened shoulders, tan arms and hair the color of October’s maples.  A smile that could charm the bees right out of their hives and the girls right out of their skirts – Bo wasn’t that same, skinny, awkward kid that preferred to spend his nights at home, talking cars and listening to radio coverage of pro races with Luke._

_Which was a good thing, really.  No time to be everything to his kid cousin when Luke had enough of his own concerns simply trying to wiggle his way back into the chickens’ good graces and relearn the goats’ habits (which was made harder by the fact that Zelda had been replaced by Bonnie Mae) and then there was Jesse.  Telling him to eat more or go to bed or just plain take it easy because he didn’t look good, he wasn’t acting right or—_

_Luke had been clear to the other side of the world and back without his uncle there to tell him what to do and he’d survived just fine.  He’d had men under his command that he’d kept safe from harm and the last thing he needed was an oldster to worry after him, complete with dark stares and the occasional accusing finger._

You need to settle down. _Those were Jesse’s favorite words lately, hissed across the dark of a farmyard that Luke had stumbled into.  On foot because he was responsible enough to know when he’d had a little too much fun at Boar’s Nest and if his feet weren’t exactly steady, they were at least used to long hikes.  That Jesse figured he didn’t need to be taking._

_Which was silly, he had only been picking up most things where he’d left off.  Chores and races and beer and girls._

_Girls, he’d liked girls before.  In fact, he’d always liked girls and no amount of rolling on the ground with Bo had ever changed the way he felt about girls.  He’d been with his share before the Marines, during the Marines and it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that he was with twice as many after the Marines.  He was a Duke boy, after all._

_So was Bo.  School let out for the last time, giving his young cousin the same kind of free time that Luke had.  Chores and farm work only took up so much of the day, and there were moonshine deliveries on an as-needed basis, late nights that Jesse fretted and tsked over, but finally agreed to let his boys do.  Helping out the neighbors here and there was only right and proper and took up some part of the week, but in the end there was too much time left over.  Far too much, and that was where the girls came in._

_Past their initial awkwardness at sharing a house and a room again, he and Bo seemed to have undertaken a serious and unspoken mission to divest all of Hazzard’s young ladies of whatever amount of virtue they still possessed.  A new girl each night until there weren’t any fresh ones that stood willing to go out with either one of them, then they went back through the ones they’d had before.  Waiting for more to come of age, but that was a slow process, so they started going through each other’s girls, then switching back and forth between them.  Testing, without ever directly asking, which of them was better or more memorable, then getting themselves slapped or shot with salt pellets depending on whether they upset the girls or their daddies first._

_Reckless and careless, confident and cocky and so sure that nothing could touch them, moving at a crazy speed without concern for themselves or others.  That was their life until the trees got brown and the air got cold.  Long nights to get up to twice the trouble they had before, testing and pushing against any boundaries that were set for them, whether by Jesse or cranky Rosco Coltrane or bloodthirsty revenuers—_

_The revenuers definitely took it the most personally.  Or reckoned they were the ones to make sure the Duke boys learned some sort of a lesson, because where there had just been Joe Higgins when Luke first got back, suddenly there were a number of others, from the dogged Harvey Essex to the fearless Andy Roach and just plain mean Don Ragsdale.  A few more got pulled in from Atlanta and Savannah just as auxiliaries, and one (not so) fine night this posse of revenuers got themselves their most sought-after prize.  They caught the Duke boys on a moonshine run and turned them over to the prison system._

_That winter was dark and brittle, raw around the edges.  Jesse saved them; of course he did, nothing worse than a few days behind bars and a lost heritage, then they were home and safe in their beds again.  Chastised and maybe just a touch smarter after the scare, after their uncle declared that he loved them more than life itself and that moonshining wasn’t anything more important than a passing phase in the history of the Duke clan.  And they, in turn, announced that probation was just fine with them because there was no such thing as being stuck in Hazzard when it was their home.  When they never wanted to be anyplace else, anyway._

_They behaved themselves.  In a relative way and for a while, they were good boys who pretty much stuck to the rules laid out by their uncle, the law and the traditions of the community.  They spent their free time building scrap parts into an engine, finding a dented and scarred chassis, and finally putting together the fastest racecar in the south.  They still drank, they still caroused, but they were home and safe in bed by midnight on Friday, spent their Saturday mornings in the relatively harmless company of Cooter Davenport, Sunday mornings in the house of the Lord, and the rest of the week they made a point of staying out from behind bars._

_Races on the dirt track circuit for small purses scratched together by local townships; that was how they tried to fill the gaps between the sparse dollars that legitimate farming could earn them.  Just hanging on by the skin of their teeth, hungry and lean but they smiled, they swaggered and otherwise convinced the world that they had everything they could ever want._

_Lonely in their own skins when really, they were never more than just about arm’s length apart._

_Months of nothing but hassle from Boss Hogg, who figured he had an advantage over a pair of boys that were a thorn in his side, of nothing but silent and half-hidden pity in the eyes of friends like Cooter and Enos.  Of walking through the scattered remnants of their lives.  Of putting up a good front for Bo, of Bo acting like he didn’t need Luke or his fronts._

_And then she’d come._

Creavy _, Rosco had said.  Sounded like one of his noises at first, not all that different from gotcha, cuffya, stuffya, ijit!_ Creavy’s the fourth entrant in the Annual Hazzard Obstacle Derby.

Amy Creavy, _she’d clarified, and the whole world took on the soft edges and gentle tones of a watercolor from there.  Nothing mattered but the self-possessed girl, all mouth and hips, smacking her bubblegum and sauntering – the way that she could take him or leave him was all right there in the half of a smile she offered up.  It turned him inside out that for the first time in his life, he wanted her more than she wanted him.  Somehow he’d always known that when it came to Amy, he’d be the one left behind with nothing but memories._

_As to Bo – he didn’t even rightly know where Bo was during those days, and that had to be a first, too.  Even when he was in the Marines he had himself a pretty good idea where Bo was and what he was doing, and if he ever got to wondering there were those near-daily letters about everything and nothing at all that his cousin sent him.  Pointless tales of pecking chickens and mind-numbing school lessons, the time Maudine got colicky and had to be walked around in circles through the night and into the next morning, all scribbled out in excruciating detail so Luke never had to question what Bo was up to.  Before Amy came he knew far too well where Bo could be found – standing too close, laughing too easily, eating too much and just generally being too big and loud._

_But for maybe three days, Luke lost track of him.  Came out the other side to find his girl moving on to someplace with faster races and nicer guys, and his cousin telling him to give the General Lee’s keys to her because the car was hers now. The fool had put the one thing they owned outright up in a bet.  Fortunately Amy was too good a sport to actually hold them to it, but that didn’t mean all was forgiven and forgotten.  Luke figured that the first time he and Bo were alone, he had a right to let his left hook teach the imbecile a thing or two about bets and cars and life and—_

_Bo figured he had a few lessons of his own to teach, and that ducking low and turning a fistfight into a wrestling match was the best way to go.  And it was.)_

“Luke there,” Daisy’s saying and it’s hearing his name that brings his attention back to the conversation in the kitchen.  “He was even worse than Bo.  You’re so lucky you grew up with a sister, because boys don’t understand nothing.”

Luke smirks down into the magazine that’s still open to the same page he hasn’t quite been reading for the last—he doesn’t even know how long.  Just that there’s a diagram at the bottom left that’s far too simple for him to have spent so much time figuring out.  Not that it matters.  He’s pretty sure Daisy and Hannah haven’t knitted a stitch (or whatever knitting’s called) and Jesse’s paper seems to be in approximately the same position it was last time Luke looked in that direction. 

“They wouldn’t never play the right games, they wouldn’t never sit still long enough to do something quiet.  Always running around and breaking things, and they just didn’t understand nothing.  Somehow they figured playing baseball was more important than having a tea party or playing house.  Everything I wanted to do, they just called it dumb.”  And it seems to him that he and Bo actually did play some of her dumb games, too, just like she played theirs.  She could hit a line drive that would part your hair, and Luke was a highly skilled fake-tea drinker, upraised pinky and all.  “They never did figure out that it was just practice for growing up.  You notice how ain’t neither of them playing basketball or baseball now, but playing house, with a mama and a daddy and dolls for babies…”  Her eyes get misted over and she stops talking to swallow a couple of times.  “Maybe I didn’t marry the right fella, but I reckon a family’s about the only thing worth practicing for.”

Luke doesn’t shake his head.  Not too much, anyway, just a little side-to-side motion.  Lets his eyes slide to the left and the empty spot next to him that doesn’t snicker back at him.  No oversized blonde cousin to share this moment of knowledge – that Daisy’s got no business daydreaming about family and love, not when she goes about it so wrong.  One lousy boyfriend after another and long ago Jesse made clear that Luke wasn’t to go beating them up just for being jerks, even if they deserved it.  Dumb rule; he and Bo could have cured her of all her foolish notions if they’d ever been allowed to interfere like they wanted to.

But no, she’s been left free to choose based on her own whims, and look where it gets her.  Just got ditched by one loser of a husband and she thinks she’s ready to go out and find another – Bo would have understood, would have smiled at what wasn’t funny and shaken his head just that little bit, too.

Jesse doesn’t see things the same way.  He lowers his newspaper all the way to take in his weepy niece, then his eyes slide over to Luke.  Hardly more than slits and eyebrows raised, like he expects Luke to fix this somehow without hitting the guy.  Luke shrugs his helplessness back at the old man and just about gets singed by the stare that gets returned to him.

_Quit being such a buzz saw_ , those eyes tell him.

So he puts down his magazine and finds his feet.  Tucks in his shirt and all but drags his feet over to where Daisy’s sitting.  Takes in a breath, makes a point not to sigh it back out and pats her on the shoulder.  Not that it matters, not that she can probably even feel it around the way Hannah’s holding her tight and mumbling knowing words into her ear.

At least, Luke thinks, Hannah will be a good role model for Daisy on how to choose a proper gentleman to marry.

 

* * *

 

“Bo,” Daisy’s voice is all breathy and quiet on the other end of the telephone line.  It reminds him of when she was about sixteen or so and started talking like Tina Louise.  Or maybe it was Marilyn Monroe; he never did know, just thought it was dumb.  Figured if Luke had still been there at the time instead of off being a brave, upstanding Marine, he would have laughed in her face.  He would have told her to cut it out, that no girl from Hazzard would ever be a movie star and besides, she didn’t need to be flirting with the boys like that.  But Luke hadn’t been there and Daisy hadn’t ever once listened to a single thing that Bo said, so it had come to be a habitual affectation.  Not all the time (because the girl could still holler like a coyote in heat if he spent too much time in the bathroom or trampled mud onto what she figured were _her_ floors) but enough to halfway drive him crazy.  It was a good thing that her fried chicken, covered in secret spices and herbs, was the best in town or he might have been driven to smother her some dark night.

Right now, that lilt in her voice is more confusing than annoying.  She’s known to it pull out of her hip pocket when she wants to trick a man into giving her help that she doesn’t really need.  A diversionary tactic that’s been crucial to more than a few of Luke’s plans.  _Get halfway naked, then stand out on the side of the road, Daisy.  That’ll make those guys pull over, then you sweet talk them out of their guns.  Me and Bo will take it from there._   That right there is Luke Duke brilliance in action.  But as far Bo he knows, there’s no great plan afoot right now.

“Me and Luke’s going up to Clemmons,” she tells him.  This, after paltry small talk and he should have known from the start that this conversation had to be leading somewhere.  Things have changed, she’s not the same Hazzard girl transplanted away from home and family, left lonely in the suburbs of Winston-Salem.  She doesn’t call him twice a week now that she’s been back in Hazzard.  He knows he shouldn’t envy the fact that she’s been abandoned by the one man she thought she loved enough to leave Hazzard for, but he halfway does.  Because she’s been home for almost a month now, and he’s limited to visiting for a day at a time.  “To collect some things.  I can’t afford the rent on my own and L.D. ain’t been paying it so…”

Daisy’s been evicted.  Or maybe not yet, she’s a Duke after all and while Dukes live with the constant threat of eviction, somehow it never quite happens.  Maybe she’s just beating the odds like she always has before. 

“Anyways, we’s coming up next Saturday to get my things and maybe sell some of the furniture back to the consignment shop I got it from in the first place.” 

It’s a thought sad enough to bring Bo out of his selfish cycle of petty jealousies over who gets to live in Hazzard and who doesn’t.  Daisy’s dismantling a life she just started to build two years back, and sure it might as well have been spun out of sugar for as stable as it never was, but it meant something to Daisy.  Now she’s got to try to put everything back the way it was and start all over again, with more heartache and less trust.  He has no idea how she’s going to do it.

“And then we was going to come on back past your place and pick up my jeep.”  Which has been in the lot in Bo’s apartment complex since the day his girl cousin showed up in his kitchen, frying eggs asking him to take her home.  He moves it every now and again so no one gets to thinking it’s been abandoned there.  Doesn’t have Daisy’s keys, but that doesn’t matter when he’s a Duke and hasn’t needed a key to start a car since he was fifteen years old and Luke taught him about hotwiring.  “It would be nice, if you was free, if you could have dinner with us.  But we understand if you can’t.”

Funny how Daisy’s doing the talking like she and Luke are a long- married couple.

“Daisy,” he says, trying not to sound as annoyed as he’s accused of being when she’s vulnerable and needy and ultimately clueless.  “I’ll be in Talladega.  I got a race next Sunday.”

“Oh, all right,” is apologetic, such a small voice.  Not even pretending at that sexy whisper now, and it’s not her fault that she doesn’t know his schedule.  She’s had enough worries of her own.

“Listen,” he says, trying to be gentle.  But it’s hard when she and Luke are some sort of a package deal that he’s on the outside of.  He does his best to keep in mind that it’s not her fault.  “Why don’t you wait a week?  After Talladega I get a good, long break before my next race.  I can get away for the whole day and not just dinner.  That way I can bring the jeep up to Clemmons and help you and Luke clean the place out.  Just, you’ll have to drop me back by here on your way back to Hazzard, is all.”

A breath, just that much on the other end of the phone.  Like such a thing has never occurred to her, and the notion might just have made her smile for the first time during this whole conversation.  “I’ll have to check with Luke,” she says, and Bo figures it all falls apart right there.

Luke knows the NASCAR schedule like he knows his own name.  He can probably recite it backwards and in pig latin.

And he reckons he’s just clever enough to have planned this little trip to avoid Bo.

_(In between bouts of stupidity, Luke was a smart guy.  Smart enough, at least, to bring the fight over Amy and Frankie and the General out beyond the tree line and into the pasture.  Smelled of Maudine and wet dirt, but it was reasonably private._

_Bo was only half as smart as Luke, or maybe only half as smart as he was angry.  Had enough of his wits about him to duck under the fist flying toward his face, but was damn fool enough to propel himself forward, shoulder first, into Luke’s midsection and try to bring him down.  It was about as pleasant as tackling one of the concrete pillars at the courthouse entrance._

_But he kept shoving, even if he might have done better to back off and either run for it or plead some manner of insanity.  Maybe go for the sympathy angle and try to get Luke to take him to Doc Petticord, but that was where his anger was stronger than his smarts – or any other part of him._

_Luke stumbled eventually, maybe from the way Bo had wrapped his arms around him and leaned with all his weight, or maybe he just tripped over a root.  Or a stone, or maybe he just took pity on Bo and gave in.  Whatever happened to cause it, Luke was down on the ground and Bo was using everything he had to try and pin him there._

_Because if Amy was the last straw, there had been a whole pile, no, a bale, of straws before her.  Girl after girl that Luke had made eyes at, kissed, had his way with – and sure.  Bo had done his share of kissing and way-having, looking and hooting and whistling when he couldn’t do anything else, but it hadn’t been the same.  Not at all the same as the way Luke stumbled around after Amy like a hound after a bitch in heat.  All right, Bo had been relatively fond of Jilly Rae Dodson’s grown-up body, but that was different.  Mostly, anyway – he might have liked Jill, but the best thing about her was that she somehow annoyed Luke.  Too skinny, too optimistic, too dedicated to saving the orphanage.  Luke didn’t care for her and she made for good leverage. Bo knew that wasn’t nice, but maybe he just didn’t know how to be nice anymore._

_Not when he’d had almost a year of putting up with Luke pretending like nothing more important than farm chores had ever been shared between them, not when he seemed so damn happy going from girl to girl and—_

_Bo had never questioned the fact that rolling around in the grass with Luke those few years back had been entirely his own doing.  Or at least the parts of it that didn’t in any way resemble regulation wrestling.  But he’d felt the way Luke’s heart throbbed in his chest when they’d rubbed together, tasted the want in the kiss.  The noises he made when Bo’s hand made its way into his pants, and they hadn’t exactly been complaints.  Then there was the way Luke held onto him after, tight and yet gentle as a grizzly mama holding a cub.  The quiet kiss, the way he’d been pulled to his feet once his clothes were fixed, and how Luke’s hand had held his too long to pass off as accidental.  Luke had liked it well enough.  And he’d like it again right now if he’d just relax enough to let Bo get a hand anywhere near his belt._

_But no, he was shoving against Bo’s shoulders, fighting like he meant it.  Like this was a real struggle, and maybe to Luke it was.  Maybe Bo was trying too hard to do this the nice way and maybe it would be for the best if he quit that now._

_Luke rolled them over, took top and pinned Bo to the ground.  Raised a fist as though he really planned to hit Bo.  Wouldn’t happen; they both knew that Luke couldn’t hit a man that was down and nearly defenseless.  Bo was just meant to flinch, and he figured he could accommodate Luke that much.  Flinching, twitching, maybe wriggling, though not necessarily in the traditional sense.  Centered in his hips, more like an arch upward until he made contact and Luke didn’t like that.  Or did, but didn’t like the fact of the liking; wouldn’t admit to it or give in to it because nothing with his fussy older cousin could ever be that easy._

_Luke shoved himself back, sitting closer to Bo’s knees than his waist and it was kind of his cousin to be so helpful.  Bo would have thanked him if he’d had the time or the breath, but he couldn’t afford to waste either.  All his strength toward taking advantage of the moment Luke was off-balance, grabbing and shoving and tipping to roll them over again so he could take top._

_Made it most of the way there, stubborn resistance from Luke that was about like trying to get Maudine to move on a chilly morning.  Caught the movement about three-quarters of the way there and tried to reverse it.  Rubbing together everywhere from their shoulders to their knees and Bo let his hips cant forward just that much harder than the rest of him.  Felt the drag and heat of it, felt the way Luke’s leg wrapped itself around both of Bo’s.  Careful to make it seem like it was all part of wrestling, but his breathing got heavy and thick, the way he rubbed against Bo just a bit too firm to be accidental._

_And then it was—_

_Exactly as it had been, what it should have been every day since that first time, years ago._

_The hands that gripped his wrists got tighter, like instinct to hold him right there where he was wanted, then loosened.  Slid up to his shoulders and grabbed on there instead, leaving trails of heat behind.  Better handhold, better leverage to rock their hips together, and it left Bo with free hands and hardly enough concentration to use them.  Shivering, licking his lips because he wanted to kiss Luke but there was no way to manage it when he was taller and Luke was looking down at where their hips were grinding together.  Either Luke had to tip his head up or Bo had to kiss his hair which wouldn’t have been satisfying (or welcome, most likely) at all._

_Settled for getting his hands between them instead – put a real hitch into Luke’s get along, and that was a shame – shaking, reaching for his own belt buckle because he wasn’t fifteen anymore, and not quite reckless enough to go after Luke’s.  Trying to concentrate when all he wanted was skin on skin without anything in between and he was getting shoved again.  Luke trying to get away or—Bo didn’t even know what he was trying to do but it wasn’t wise to take chances.  If Luke walked away from this now he could write it all off as Bo’s doing.  It’d be so easy to blame a stupid baby cousin and this thing between them wasn’t that, hadn’t even been that even when Bo was young enough to be called a kid._

_Motives changed, Bo left off worrying about his own buckle and moved a hand over to Luke, cupping him through the jeans.  Rubbing and stroking as much as could be done through thick layers, fingers sliding to where he figured it felt best and there was no doubt about it, Luke liked that.  Whatever distance he’d tried to put between them got closed; they rolled again until Bo was on his back.  Might not have been precisely where he wanted to be but at least this way Luke couldn’t say it was anyone’s doing but his own._

_No more room to worry about belt buckles, no place at all for hands between them anymore when Luke was grinding against him like that.  Hand on Luke’s head, tangled in his hair and pulling.  No meanness intended but damn it, if Bo couldn’t touch him where he wanted to, at least he was going to kiss him.  Luke’s head came up finally, Bo tipped his chin down and it was awkward, not terribly comfortable, but there it was.  Kiss, and Bo had done plenty of practicing since the last time he’d done this with Luke.  (Luke had too – had done far too much practicing as far as Bo was concerned, just in the last week alone.)  He’d gotten better and he knew it, could feel it in the way he could distract Luke with so little. How it made what his hips had been doing into less of a grind and more of a rocking motion.  Nice, steady and gentle, like waves against the side of a rowboat.  Calm enough now to get a hand back down there._

_Luke met him halfway, a mess of fingers and palms until they worked it out – Bo getting the buckles and buttons, Luke handling the zippers and both their hands together working on pulling jeans and shirttails out of the way.  Interrupted the smooth rhythm Luke had set, but it was worth it.  Hands on each other now, wrapping around, sliding and stroking.  Kissing, then not; just breathing.  Panting.  Heat between them and it was almost enough, not quite.  Wanted to touch Luke, more than what his one hand was doing already.  Knuckles, backs of his fingers gliding up under Luke’s shirt to his belly, dragging in the hair there, and he got a moan for that.  Luke’s free hand up on his shoulder, thick fingers on the back of his neck, one more kiss and then it didn’t matter, he didn’t know where any part of him ended or where Luke began.  He just knew the feeling, the way everything rushed southward to his belly and below, and then the wash of colors behind his closed eyelids._

_Just that and trying to breathe, and then it was Luke’s arms around him and holding on like he never wanted to let go.)_

“I don’t know,” Daisy worries quietly in his ear.  “Luke said this Saturday was best for him.”

“Daisy,” he scolds and he knows better.  She’s upset about this whole mess with L.D. and on top of that she’s trying to run interference between him and Luke, when she doesn’t even know why she should have to.  “Let me talk to Luke.”

A sigh that wavers as it crosses the phone lines.  Not fair that she’s in the middle of more things that she realizes.  “Luke’s out with Hannah right now, sugar.”  Well, isn’t that nice.  It’s the middle of a Tuesday afternoon in August and if Bo remembers right, Jesse used to work them dang hard at this time of year.  Seemed like everything got ripe at once and it wouldn’t do to let the birds or coons or locusts get at it.  Had to be out there making sure nothing went wrong, but now it’s different.  Luke’s engaged and apparently has a free pass to play his whole afternoon away, probably rolling on the grass somewhere with Hannah.  Right out in Hazzard Square, because it’s perfectly normal and perfectly lovely for Luke Duke and a girl to do whatever they want, whenever and however they want.  “But I’ll talk to him.  And I’ll let you know what he decides.”

Because, as always, Luke holds all the cards.


	5. Chapter 5

He’s happy to see Bo; of course he is.  The problem hasn’t ever been whether he wants to see Bo, only whether it’s prudent.  Whether it’s a good idea for either of them, but Bo never worries about being sensible when there’s something he wants.

How Bo has managed to get Jesse to unknowingly collude with him is a far more interesting question.  Luke was very careful in his planning, deliberately choosing a Saturday when he knew the NASCAR schedule would keep his cousin away.  He figured it’d only take him and Daisy a couple of hours to retrieve whatever she figured was worth keeping, return what the store would take back, and cram the rest into a dumpster so hard that it might just break.  He assumed Bo would figure out the wisdom of the two Duke boys keeping their distance from each other, especially when both of them would be itching to beat the tar out of L.D., but Bo and wisdom don’t belong in the same thought. 

Of course Bo wanted to be a part of tearing Daisy’s place apart.

Luke reckoned that was fair enough – Bo should get a chance to break L.D.’s furniture if it would help him any, and Luke could stay behind in Hazzard and split logs.  Sure, it’s summer and there’s no real urgency as pertains to firewood, but fall’s not that far around the corner and shattered wood works the same whether it’s kindling or unwanted furniture.  Besides, it’d be one less hassle.  No need to go begging to Boss for permission to leave the state.

But no, that was where Jesse got right in the middle of the mess and Luke resented it.  How many schemes had he come up with, how many times had he gotten the whole town out of trouble and here he was being overruled and second guessed on one of his most straightforward plans.

“You can wait a week,” was Jesse’s final assessment when Daisy brought the topic to the dinner table.  Served it up like so much fried chicken when it might have done better to be one of those behind-closed-door discussions between cousins.  But Daisy never had been one for that, not like he and Bo were.  To her (and to Jesse) a family discussion meant the whole family.  Or at least all the family that could be gathered at quick notice.  “It’ll be good for the three of you to spend time together.  Like the old days.”

No.  Whatever today turns out to be, it can’t be like the old days.  Not like those afternoons he and Bo spent rolling around on grass and straw kissing and rubbing and—

But buzz saws don’t reverse, at least not without cutting off a few fingers.  Convincing Jesse to change his mind would have required a lot of explaining that none of them really wanted Luke to do, so he agreed and here they are.  Three Duke kids, tearing apart a house that never looked like much of a home, even before they started taking pictures off the walls and rolling up the rugs.

Bo is the same brat he ever was – getting his way even when it’s not good for him, like those two slices of dessert cake he used to wheedle out of Aunt Lavinia.  Like this morning, when he shows up with Daisy’s jeep and a grin that announces this as some sort of a grand adventure instead of the hard work and heartbreak that it really is.  For all his effort to get this whole trip accommodated around him, now that he’s here he’d rather knock shoulders with Daisy as she wraps her dishes in newspaper to bring them back to Hazzard than to do any work.  Daisy smirks at him, Bo smiles back and they giggle over a whole lot of nothing at all.  Luke drags the couch across the floor by himself, since he’s the only one around here willing to do any heavy lifting.

_(Bo was—_

_Bo was just as hard to say no to as he had been as a fiendish toddler with fluffy curls and baby teeth that were too big for the rest of his face.  Luke had tried, he’d tried plenty.  Had explained how they couldn’t do this, how the town would take after them with stones if they were ever caught.  How Boss and Rosco were apt to spy on the Dukes and their land (or worse, send Enos to do their dirty work for them) and wouldn’t they just have a field day if they happened to see two Duke boys committing the felony of sodomy.  Up the river far too fast to grab a paddle and then they wouldn’t just be rolling around in the grass with the guys already incarcerated there, they’d be taking it in—_

_But he didn’t say that part.  Left it at Boss and Rosco and prison and left Bo to connect whatever dots he could.  (Or would because Bo wasn’t so much naïve as perfectly willing to stick his head in the sand.)  He added on a reminder about the whippings of their younger years for even hinting at a lie and reminded Bo that omission wasn’t any better, and what if Jesse asked them outright what they were doing when they disappeared for hours on end?_

Wrestling, _Bo answered with a shrug.  Because it usually did start out that way._

_But Hazzard was the same fishbowl it ever had been and if Boss and Rosco didn’t catch them, someday Dobro would.  Or Cooter or heck, even Maybelle from the phone company, because she enjoyed good gossip and had the best means in the whole county of spreading it.  Or Jesse himself could catch them and what then?  It would break the old man’s heart to see his two nephews rolling around with their buttons loose and zippers down and their hands in each other’s pants.  Was Bo really willing to do that after they already went out and did such a fabulous job of losing Jesse’s moonshine business for him?_

_Bo seemed to feel that such worries were pointless._

_Bo was hanging on him now, in the heat of the afternoon.  Arms and legs both clamped around him in a way that wouldn’t be possible on land.  Trying to squeeze the life out of him like a boa constrictor, or maybe it was more like smothering him.  A kiss – for once this hadn’t started with wrestling but with a pond-flavored kiss.  Their own pond, the one on the south forty because it was August and no one would question two Duke boys skinny-dipping a Wednesday afternoon away when they’d spent the morning working the rows of corn._

_But that kiss._

_That kiss would be hard to explain to anyone, let alone Jesse._ We were just practicing for our Saturday night dates. _That would be a lie._ Bo’s just a really good kisser _would be a half truth.  Because that kiss was leading somewhere, quicker than a freight train.  Luke’s arms around Bo (because they’d always been around Bo, even if he hadn’t much wanted to think about who grabbed who first, and how it was that Bo could hold himself up in the water when both of his legs were wrapped around Luke’s middle) shifted, letting him drop a few inches.  Letting things get lined up all nice and pretty and then the kiss was over, quick as that.  Bo breathing heavily against his cheek and in his ear as they rubbed against each other, found a rhythm and worked it._

_“Luke,” Bo said, and it was too cold.  Warm where they rubbed together, but the pond was in shade all morning and wasn’t deep enough to hold onto yesterday’s warmth.  It was good right now, but it wasn’t going to work for long._

_“Bo,” he answered back, loosening his grip and letting Bo slide down even further.  The fool wouldn’t put his legs down to catch himself, just hung on harder to Luke’s neck and tried to shuffle his legs back up to where they had been.  They were going to drown in four feet of water this way, and that would get the whole town talking.  How them Duke boys was found at the bottom of the family’s irrigation pond, naked and wrapped around each other.  “Just, let go.  Stop.”_

_Here came the kiss again, fast and hard and mean.  Furious.  Bo did not want to stop, did not want to be told to stop or offered a list of consequences even one more time.  Teeth in the kiss as much as lips, hand at the back of Luke’s neck pulling him forward hard enough that he was likely to pull a muscle or two.  Past the flavor of pond water now, and well-nigh onto finding the remnants of breakfast._

_Slipping his arms more tightly around Bo, hoisting him back up to where he had been was only self-preservation.  Bo could swim like a fish and Luke could sink like a stone.  Best to keep Bo where he wanted to be.  For a minute or two anyway, until he calmed down and remembered where they had been, what they had been doing and he figured that breathing was more important than kissing._

_“We got to get out,” Luke managed around his own thick pant.  Rubbing was nice, but cold water wasn’t promising for where this thing wanted to go._

_“I don’t want to get out.”  Of course Bo didn’t.  He liked it right where he was, relying on the water and Luke to hold him up while he shifted and squirmed and otherwise pleasured himself._

_“Can’t do this here,” Luke pointed out.  Felt it was pretty obvious and perfectly sound logic, too._

_“Can’t do this,” Bo pointed out, his legs tightening hips flexing and his hardness moving against Luke’s, “on land.”  Not standing up, anyway.  “Besides, ain’t there some way we could,” Bo loosened his legs enough to drop himself about six inches.  Luke automatically shifted to keep him from falling all the way into the water, and Bo tightened his legs again, around Luke’s spread thighs.  Shifting and squirming and making his point clear.  “Do this?”_

_“Who says,” Luke answered and his voice wavered and caught.  Mouth dry even with all that water around him, and he swallowed but it didn’t help much of anything.  “You get to?”_

_Because what Bo wanted was beyond the rubbing and rolling and hand jobs that he had wheedled and wrestled and otherwise fought out of Luke for the last three months.  He wanted inside – and here, slippery in the water, he halfway thought he could get it._

_“Who says I even want to?” Luke growled out.  Dismissive, tightening the muscles in his thighs and bringing his legs back together, locked tight.  Releasing his hold on Bo and letting him drop backward into the water._

_Cold, the water had always been cold, but now that Bo was out of his arms it was cold in places he hadn’t really felt it before._

_“Luke,” the complaint, because Bo was cold too.  And wet and miserable looking.  Lonely, even if he wasn’t more than two feet away._

_“Come on,” Luke said, offering a hand.  Let Bo catch it and pull on it like Luke was going to go back to where they’d been.  “Come on,” he repeated, tugged gently and waited for Bo to give up and come out of the water with him.  To the bank where the grass stuck to their skin and it smelled of earth and living things as they rolled around, kissing and rubbing and finally wrapping their hands around each other and stroking until the release came._

_Luke held onto Bo after, like he always did, and figured he was going to have to solve this problem where Bo had figured out that there was more they could do together than just pulling each other off.)_

Dust kicks up when he starts to roll the huge oval of a rag rug that sits in the middle of the living room. 

“Bo, get over here and do some work.”  There’s not a lot in here, but it’s going to take all three of them actually lifting and hauling and moving if they’re going to get to that consignment store before it closes.  He rolls the rug a second time as Bo pulls a face at him, pats Daisy on the hair and actually starts to move like maybe he plans to do something useful after all. 

He’s happy to see Bo, of course he is.  Just because he’s annoying as ever doesn’t mean Luke’s not happy to see him, and that’s why he pats him low on the back as he passes by to get to the other end of the rug.

More dust rises with the next roll.  Smells stale and airless, smells of every city house that Luke’s ever been in.  City folk all but hold their noses against the smell of livestock, but Luke reckons that before they can point fingers, those city slickers ought to have to spent a few hours smelling their own stench.  Because it’s not so pretty, either.

* * *

 

Luke’s nose wrinkles again, that almost (but not quite, at least not to those who know his mannerisms well) imperceptible shake of his head that announces his annoyance with his cousins, the furniture, the task, or maybe even just the air.  Just being here at all is such a burden to him.

Protective of those younger than him almost to a fault, especially family.  That’s Luke, and Bo figures that if there were a stranger here with fist raised to hurt either him or Daisy, Luke would take that idiot down so fast he’d never know what hit him.  Violence against anyone who would hurt those he loves, that part’s like instinct, but Luke never has figured out how to protect anyone’s feelings.  How to stop frowning long enough to offer a word of encouragement or a kind touch.  How to make everyone around him stop feeling guilty for having gotten themselves in a position to need his help.

“Almost done,” he assures Daisy as the two of them pass her in the kitchen on their way to bring the easy chair out to the pickup.  Next to last thing to go there and it’s a heavy bastard with a rocker and footrest built right into it.  Figures Luke saved it for last just so they’d be the most tired when they got around to having to lift it.  (Or maybe it really is what Luke says it is – smaller than the couch and heavier than the table, a good anchor for keeping the whole mess piled high.)  What’s going to consignment is in the pickup and what’s going back to the farm will go in Daisy’s jeep.  Not a lot in the jeep pile, so after they get the stupid chair in the tailgate of the pickup they ought to be pretty close to done here.  So long as Daisy keeps putting dishes into boxes and stops staring off at nothing and sighing.  He pauses long enough on his way to tickle her ribs; she giggles and Luke turns toward them and frowns.

There will be no mirth at this here house-emptying, apparently.

Bo waves his hand to keep Luke moving toward that final chair and the living room where the creaking of the floorboards under his weight echoes off the bare walls.  Stomp, stomp, stomp – Luke is not happy.

“Don’t mind him,” Bo whispers to Daisy and drops a kiss on her head.  Luke never has completely adjusted to how Bo wound up taller than him, than anyone else in the family.  But Bo likes how it makes him precisely the right height to lean his arm across Luke’s shoulders and kiss the top of Daisy’s head.  “He’s just—” being Luke.

“I ain’t bothered by it.  Luke ain’t no good at things he can’t fix with one of his plans,” Daisy says, taking her lower lip into her mouth.  The effort to stay cheerful despite her surroundings is wearing her out.  “Or a fistfight.”

That’s putting it kindly.

_(“Bo,” Luke snapped at him and it was one too many times.  Or maybe twelve too many times.  Bo was just about sick of it._

_Used to be easy enough to get Luke to fight him.  Or wrestle him, anyway; they weren’t supposed to fight each other and mostly they abided by that rule._

_Us Dukes got to stick together, Uncle Jesse would say._ _We ain’t got nothing else in this world.  (Of course, sometimes, when it made a better point, they only had the farm and nothing else in the world.  But that one usually got said to lazy boys who tried to get out of morning chores.)_ _You don’t fight, not with each other._

_“Luke,” he echoed back, hotly.  But there wasn’t a whole lot he could say to follow that.  Not when his complaint was that Luke held his body stiff and refused to let himself be dragged down into the moss and dirt.  Because they didn’t have words for this thing they did, because it wasn’t anything they ever even admitted between the two of them.  It was nonexistent except when it was happening; so fragile that speaking it out loud would probably put an end to it.  About all Bo had to get it going was his hands, his urges and Luke’s willingness._

_Which might just have run its course._

_“We ain’t doing this no more,” Luke explained in no uncertain terms._

_“Why do you get to decide that?”_

_Luke just stood there under the trees that were all clumped together, like the gossiping ladies after church, between pasture and field.  A lost corner of their own land where once upon a time they’d made up games that were some kind of a cross between cowboys and Indians and tag.  Luke used to look at him this same way back then, when he’d suggest that whatever had led up to him losing the game was unfair.  Like he was an idiot, or maybe just a child.  The exact same way he looked at Rosco, most days._

Because _, his stance said, hand on hip and head tipped back to meet Bo’s eyes.  Chin out and chest just slightly puffed._ It takes two to tango and I ain’t gonna be one of the two.

_“I ain’t decided nothing,” Luke growled back.  Eyes bluer than the sky ever had been and somehow they got even brighter when he was angry.  Or righteous, or just plain spoiling for a fight.  “I just figured out what’s right, is all.”_

_“What’s right?  Shoot, Luke, you—”_

_“Bo,” cut him off.  Genuine annoyance in the shout that was too loud to make sense.  Luke got quieter when he meant business, loud was a bluff and Bo figured he could work his way around Luke’s objections.  Especially when he already knew what they were.  “What we been doing, it ain’t smart.  You know how Boss has this place practically under twenty-four hour surveillance.”  The usual lead off explanation and it was as easy to counter as it ever had been.  Not that Luke had ever been so vehement in giving it before._

_“By Rosco,” Bo pointed out.  “And Enos.  Ain’t neither of them ever been able to find their butts with both hands.”_

_Clearly this was a fallacious argument.  Luke just shook his head.  “And sometimes they just happen to get lucky.”_

_“Enos ain’t never got lucky in his whole life.”  But Luke was too far from anything like a good mood to even smirk at that one.  Which was a shame, because Bo was rather proud of it.  “Him and Rosco ain’t never gonna come closer than the east ridge,” that mostly overlooked the front of the house and the farmyard.  Even with binoculars they’d never be able to see anywhere near this part of the property.  “Not without a warrant.  Uncle Jesse would tear them apart piece by piece if they tried.”  Give or take that Uncle Jesse preached peace and nonviolence.  But he’d bluster and threaten and Rosco would say about a dozen ijits as he backed away, hands up in surrender._

_“Yeah, Uncle Jesse’d protect us.  Because we’re family.  The end of the line, and don’t you figure at least one of us is supposed to carry on the family name?”  That was a new one.  “Daisy’s babies ain’t gonna be called Dukes, and even if they were, she ain’t in no hurry to have kids.”_

_“And you are?” Bo let out an incredulous laugh.  “Hell, Luke, you ain’t had nothing nice to say about no girl since—” Amy Creavy.  But Bo didn’t want to think about her.  Not the way Luke had looked at her, the way he’d reacted to her.  The way nothing else had mattered to him in the three days she’d been around.  Even if it had been her presence that had jump started this thing between them again.  “You ain’t about to have no babies either, Luke.”_

_“Not as long as I’m too busy looking after you.”_

_It was bait.  Some sort of a goad and he wasn’t sure what it was supposed to do.  Make him try to hit Luke so they could punch each other for a bit then go home and get scolded for their fat lips?  Make him start that wrestling match after all so they could grind it out together?  Or maybe he should go stomping off in a fit of rage so Luke wouldn’t have to think about him or what they did together anymore._

_Bo didn’t know what he was supposed to do, so he just did the one thing he could: stood his ground.  An airplane passed noisily overhead as he waited for Luke’s next objection, his next complaint and reason that Bo should just leave him alone.  And just maybe Bo was getting close to being perfectly willing to accommodate Luke in that respect._

_“Listen, Bo.”  It all broke down there.  The bravado, the bluster, the whole pretense of Luke caring about passing on his genes or getting caught by the town fools in blue.  The tough stance, the thrown back shoulders and squinting eyes.  All of it gave way as Luke ran a hand through his hair.  “What we been doing, it’s like lying.”  That one wasn’t new.  Not exactly, Luke had talked about sins of omission and secrets that they shouldn’t be keeping before.  “I reckon we can keep doing it, if you want.”_

_Bo’s heart started pounding before he could tell it not to.  Before he could remember that absolutely nothing with Luke was ever this easy._

_“If we tell Jesse first.”_

_Oh, sure.  Because they wouldn’t be able to do anything once they’d been killed by an enraged uncle._

_“Luke,” he complained._

_“It’s the only way, Bo.  I ain’t willing to go on keeping this a secret.  It’s like lying and I reckon that even if you don’t, I know better than that.”  Of course he did.  Luke had been the oldest since the day Jesse and Lavinia took them in, and for every stupid prank or crazy scheme that Bo had followed him into, Luke had gotten extra licks of the whip because he was supposed to know better.  Eventually he learned his lesson or just got tired of sleeping on his stomach and eating off the mantelpiece; Luke calmed down and the whippings stopped.  He done a fine job of convincing Jesse that he finally did know better.  “You ready to go tell him now?”_

_No, of course he wasn’t.  Luke wasn’t either, at least Bo didn’t think he was.  Seemed like a bluff, but it wasn’t worth calling.  Not when his uncle would look at him with those disappointed eyes.  The yelling wouldn’t much matter after that; Jesse being ashamed of his behavior would hurt worse than any kind of punishment the old man could still dole out._

_Luke sighed, ran a hand through his hair again.  Looked out through the break in the tree line to the fields that would need to be harvested soon enough, then back to Bo.  “Find yourself a girl, Bo,” was his final word on the matter before he turned away and put one foot in front of the other.  Heading home._

_So Bo did, he found himself a girl and what a girl she was.  Pretty and confident, flattering and smart.  No older than Bo and there she was, running her own carnival.  It only helped a little that Luke hated her at first sight.)_

“Listen,” he says quietly, in this momentarily private space between himself and his broken-hearted girl cousin.  “When we get done with all this,” the packing, the trip to the consignment store, the way Daisy’s going to have a say a silent goodbye to whatever dreams of domesticity and little children’s feet this house once held for her.  “I’ll take us all out for dinner someplace nice.”  Because lunch, such as it was, consisted of ordered-in pizza that was about as tasty as ketchup on cardboard the first time and hasn’t improved any on it frequent return trips.  “You just say where.”

She picks up one of the crystal glasses that’s been standing on the table in front of her the whole time that she’s been wrapping and boxing other items.  Plates and pots and pans that haven’t needed half the attention she’s given them, but it’s kept her confined to the kitchen while he and Luke have torn apart the rest of her home, including her marital bedroom.  The glass though – and there are three more like it – that’s going to take a lot of care to pack.  If she doesn’t dash it right there on the table that he and Luke are going to have to haul out of here when she’s done using it.  The look on her face suggests that the crystal may not be long for this world.  Then she sighs, reaches across the table and grabs another sheet of old newspaper to wrap it in.  The Clemmons Herald, with a lead story about local politicians fighting over the usage of some park that children never play in anymore, and she crumples it viciously, then sticks it into the mouth of the glass.  It, along with the other three, was a wedding present from Lulu Coltrane Hogg.  Daisy and L.D. drank a toast out of two of them at the reception.  She may not hold any tender feelings about that day now, but she’s still fond of the unfortunately long-suffering Lulu. 

“Actually, I was thinking,” she says, grabbing another sheet of newspaper to wrap around the outside of the glass.  The sound of crumpling paper nearly drowns out what she has to say and Bo halfway wishes they hadn’t already taken the kitchen chairs out to the pickup.  She looks tired, in need of a place to sit and rest, and that’s the least of it.  “I ain’t exactly hungry and I kind of want to get back to Hazzard before dark.  I was wondering if you and Luke could take care of getting the furniture back to the store.” And tossing whatever the proprietor won’t take back into some dumpster somewhere.  “And I could just head home straight from here.”

“Well,” he starts to answer, unsure.  He’d really like to spend more time with her, to get a chance to give her one good meal before her final retreat from the life she tried to build, back to the one she had meant to leave behind forever.  He can’t bring L.D. back, but he can at least fill her belly with warm food that she herself does not have to cook.

“Luke could take you back to Moorseville in the pickup.  It’s practically on the way as it is.  And I could have dinner with Jesse.”  And cry, but the old man’s shoulder is used to tears, better at than Bo is absorbing them until they’re all played out.  Might just be for the best if she goes home now, except there’s Luke to deal with.  The man with the plan and he never has liked it a whole lot when someone starts to improvise right on the middle.  He’s still holding grudges about how Bo got himself invited along when it was just supposed to just be Luke and Daisy, changing things again now might be—

“I reckon that’s fine, Daisy,” Luke says quietly from where he’s standing at the short hallway between kitchen and living room.  “If that’s what you want to do.”

—dangerous.  Could be very dangerous to leave him and Luke alone when Luke’s already upset and looking for someone or something to hit.

 

* * *

 

Rubes.  Charlie, as the uptight little man introduced himself, stops short – just short, just _inches_ short – of saying it out loud.  Hicks, and he figures that the two Duke boys standing in front of him, sweaty in dust-covered blue jeans that took the worst of the accumulated dirt from under all Daisy’s furniture, are just dumb enough that he can take full advantage of them.

“Look,” Luke tells him.  “A scratch like that don’t even go deeper than the varnish.”  On a kitchen table that was probably assembled in some factory in a foreign country, not constructed with the careful craftsmanship of a backwoods man who was making it for his own family, for his descendants eat off of for five generations to come.  This here table is a piece of junk – Luke’s perfectly willing to agree with Charlie (Chuckles, Chucklehead, his brain supplies an endless list of pejorative names for him) about that.  But he’s not going to have this man tell him that the table has dropped in value by fifty dollars just because of a nick on the surface.  (One that, if Luke’s completely honest, was probably put there by the way he and Bo had crammed it into the tail of the pickup with no amount of patience or real care.  And with quite a bit of grumbling at each other because Daisy had sped out of the tiny driveway minutes before with a pert wave and sad smile, leaving them totally alone.  Being glad to see Bo aside, the day hadn’t ever been a nice one and by then it had gone on too long.)

“Nevertheless,” Cheap Charlie is saying, and the man is a fool.  Bo’s lowered eyebrows go to prove that he’s about at the end of his allotment of cheer and patience for the day.  He’s about a hair’s breadth from taking a swing at this skinny man in the shiny gray suit that announces all but screams city-boy.  Winston-Salem isn’t half as stately as Atlanta and is maybe only a quarter as crowded, but its people are just as talented at underestimating a couple of sodbusters like him and Bo.  Luke smiles to balance out the fact that Bo is not, but it’s hard edged.  All teeth and not the slightest bit friendly.  Smart people (and Boss and Rosco would count as smart next to Chucklehead here) would be backing away from him and Bo right now.  If they liked their faces without bruises, anyway.  “Damaged is damaged and you’re lucky I’m offering as much as I am.”

Charlie’s nose is about to be far more damaged than the table.

“Well, then I reckon me and Bo will just keep it.”  Not that either of them wants it; he’s not sure what he’d do with it if he did keep it.  Maybe put it up in the loft of the barn in case Daisy ever moves out again, but then again, she’ll probably never want to eat off this thing again.  But there’s nothing like pretending you want something to increase its value to fools who don’t know any better.  “Paint a light coat of varnish on it or maybe just give it a good scrubbing.  Probably ain’t deep enough to need more than that.  And it’ll go nice on our back porch, right, Bo?”  Funny look on Bo’s face that seems a bit shocked at the notion that they share a porch – front, back or otherwise – anymore.  Technically it’s not a lie; he figures that when the time comes, Bo will be entitled to his part of the old homestead.  Where he lives now doesn’t negate his future claim to Duke property.  (And what a lovely day that will be, when Bo decides to come home and move in with him and Hannah.  They’ll have to throw a lavish and astonishingly uncomfortable party on that day.)

Bo recovers or just plain remembers how to improvise.  “We can play cards on it,” he asserts.  Which is not at all likely.  They haven’t played a real game in the dozen or so years since Bo taught himself all those card tricks.  Never even get past the shuffling for all the showing off.

“And eat out there in nice weather.”  Which would be quite a bit of a struggle, really.  The table is about the same size as the available space on the porch, with no room left over for chairs.  But Chuckie-boy doesn’t know that.  “Won’t Daisy’s fried chicken taste great out in the fresh air, Bo?”

Lip licking and stomach rubbing constitute his cousin’s answer to that one.  A fine acting job right there, as if eating chicken in the great outdoors would be a fresh, new treat to them.  As if they haven’t eaten it off their own picnic table, out of a basket, on the run in the General when Rosco and his handcuffs showed up at the dinner table about once a month.  As if they haven’t sat on a picnic blanket with a girl apiece, eating Daisy’s fried chicken and silently regarding each other instead of their dates.  Chicken and fresh air served as props in that little play where they pretended girls were anything at all but hassles to them.

As if the smell of spring-wet grasses, blooming things and Daisy’s fried chicken couldn’t break his heart in two, even three years later.

“Well, I don’t know.  Maybe I could meet you halfway and give you two hundred twenty-five?”

Luke’s smile gets a little more real now.  This guy’s going to be easy.  Luke reckons he’ll have him talked up to paying three hundred before this is over.

Transactions get completed, money stretches Luke’s wallet to proportions it has never before experienced.  To be taken home to Daisy; after she pays that month of rent that L.D. ran off and stuck her with, she’ll be pretty close to broke again.  Won’t matter, she’s already got dreams of being a newspaper reporter or a bank teller, maybe a baker at the confectionery shop.  All of which means she’ll be back working at the Boar’s Nest within a month, because no other job has ever suited her and no other waitress has ever captured the townsmen’s imagination quite so completely since she’s been gone.

The good will from outsmarting Charlie-Chucklehead lasts them well into the drive out Interstate 40 toward Mooreville.  Bo telling him where to go to move over to Interstate 77 is somewhat annoying when there are perfectly clear signs to follow, but he’s easily distractible.  Luke gets him talking about last week’s Winston Cup race in Talledega.  Bo narrates every detail like a Hazzard old-timer telling moonshiner’s tales.  Rambling and probably embellishing here and there, but he’s enjoying himself and Luke gets to make his own decisins about when to go left or right.  And to catch glimpses of Bo’s face, animated in the oncoming headlights, to see that smile that’s more powerful than noonday sun.  When he leaves the highway for local roads, they talk about stopping at some diner in town, but Bo winds up directing him to his apartment complex instead.

“Come up,” Bo offers tentatively.  “I got to have something I can fix for us to eat.”  Which is a touch ominous and Luke reckons he really ought to demur for more than one reason, but the truth is, he wants to see Bo’s apartment.  To see how a reasonably famous NASCAR driver lives.  And besides, he’s not quite ready to say goodbye yet.  Not when there are still four hours left on the pass that allows him to be in North Carolina and only two hours between him and the state line.

Turns out that Bo’s living quarters are not particularly impressive.  From the moment he makes a right onto the property and lets Bo direct him to a designated parking lot to the point at which they are climbing three flights of concrete stairs, all Luke can think about is how much it looks like some sort of hotel at an Interstate pull-off.  Bo fiddles with a set of keys until he finds the one he wants and when he opens the dark green door with the number 306 painted across the outside, and feels around the wall until he flips on the light switch.  The apartment looks like it’s inhabited by an untidy teenager.  It’s mostly just one spacious, open room (though there’s a three-quarters closed door at the back where he reckons there might just be a bedroom) with a strip of a kitchen at one end and a large bay window at the other.  In between is a cacophony of sparse, but ugly furniture – a chair that’s got to be far too small for Bo to fit into comfortably, a card table with folding chairs that may or may not constitute the dining area.  The couch, whose striped oranges and reds are doing a fierce battle with the blue shag carpet and the one piece of art on the wall that looks like it might have been painted by numbers.

And all of that is before he takes into account the mess of clothes and newspapers and plastic cups lying around.

Bo has the grace to look slightly embarrassed and to mumble some kind of an excuse that sounds vaguely like he’s saying it’s not Tuesday and that he never has guests so he doesn’t think to clean up.  Luke would laugh except for the part where it sounds so sad.  Dukes in Hazzard practically have live-in friends like Cooter and Enos, and then there are their uninvited guests, like Boss and Rosco.  There’s no such thing as loneliness in their old homestead, not like this place that’s almost hollow.  Like it’s hardly even real.

Dinner is, sadly, quite real and comes from a can.  Bo doesn’t even apologize about it, just bends low to dig around in cabinets under the sink, mumbling something about ‘Mathilda’ before reemerging with a pot.  Offers a sheepish sort of a grin and dumps what vaguely resembles spaghetti (except for its too-orange color that proves there were probably no real tomatoes used in the creation of the sauce) into the pot, then reaches for another can to open.  More of the same and Bo has to move another pot off the stove and into the sink to get to a burner.  It’s as though all those years of living with Daisy – and Lavinia before that – taught the boy nothing at all.  (It’s as if he never grew up, and just maybe he didn’t.  And maybe Luke had his own hand in that.)

But he’s eaten worse in far more dreadful places and he figures that he can eat this, too, as long as Bo can find him a fork.  Preferably a clean one, but he’s eaten after Bo before and it won’t kill him to do it now.  So long as he doesn’t think about it or see where the fork comes from.  Which might be why he asks to be directed to the bathroom.

It’s quiet in there, away from the noise of Bo banging spoon against pot and pot against stove.  Humming, too, and in a minutes he’s likely to start singing in that yodeling way that always sounds like he’s half laughing.  Most of that is dulled down by the small fan built into the bathroom light, leaving Luke with a moment of peace for the first time since Bo arrived at Daisy’s this morning.  A chance to think, to wonder at the wisdom of where he is and what he’s doing.  Of old decisions that shouldn’t be unmade by new ones and just about the time he’s washing his hands in the sink he’s got it figured that he should thank Bo for the thought, then walk out his front door and right back down to the pickup.  Get in and drive like they used to in the General, not stopping until he runs out of gas or gets home, whichever comes first.

He looks away from the guilty face staring back at him from the mirror, reaches for the doorknob and then sees something next to the towel rack on the otherwise bare, white wall.  Seems so small, but it’s in the same frame it ever was.  Cheap, silver, metal with the tarnish at the upper right corner and inside is the slightly out-of-focus photo that Daisy’s old brownie camera captured of two Duke boys and their newly constructed car.  The General, after they’d painted him orange and given him his racing number, but before the flag or his name made it onto the roof.

The blur doesn’t hide the fact that Bo’s jeans are about a size too small or that Luke’s hair is a windblown mess, nor does it disguise the openly gleeful smiles on both of their faces.

Luke remembers posing, how Bo’s arm draped hotly across his shoulders on what was otherwise a relatively brisk Hazzard day.  How his own arm snaked behind Bo’s back but gripped around the doorframe instead of holding onto Bo.  Smart, he’d told himself back then.  To keep some distance because Bo was interested in girls and it would be best to keep it that way.  And even if he knows now that he was nothing more than a coward, he reckons it was still the best choice.  Wishes he’d never let Bo change his mind about that, wishes—

But that photograph is here, not in some drawer back at the farm.  Not lost, like Luke might have figured, not up in the attic with some of the other items that used to decorate their room.  Things Bo didn’t take and never asked after, like the racing flags and that poster from the Carnival of Thrills.  Maybe he doesn’t need mementos of local races now that he’s hit the big time of NASCAR, maybe those things don’t mean much to him anymore.  Not like this photograph that he kept and hung on the wall.

(Of his bathroom, and what does that mean?  Is it a place he can be sure he’ll see it daily or is it something he imagines flushing down the drain?)

By the time Luke makes it back to the kitchen, his hands still dripping because he forgot to dry them, Bo is offering up a carton of milk.  Store-bought and the little bit that he has poured into a glass is about as thin as water.  Luke puts up a hand to refuse – the milk, maybe the meal, maybe the fact that he’s here at all – and Bo folds the spout inward and opens the refrigerator to put it away.  Hands out a beer instead, fancy-looking, in a dark bottle with a colorful label.  A higher-class beverage than the Boar’s Nest could ever hope to serve and Luke accepts it.  Accepts that he wants to drink it, that he wants to eat Bo’s lousy canned food that’s bubbling on the stove, that he wants to be right where he is.  In a disaster of an apartment with a table that’s too small for both of them to sit and eat at once.

 


	6. Chapter 6

Luke's caught somewhere between smiling and twitching. Bo reckons his cousin's military training is itching to start scrubbing at the front door and not stop until he hits Bo's bedroom at the back of the apartment. With extra attention paid to the kitchen, and Bo has already explained as best he can to a man who has never had any extra income for luxuries that Mathilda will be here in a few days to put the place back into perfect condition. Bo reckons it would probably break her heart if she were to let herself in on Tuesday morning to find everything already in perfect order. It's his job to mess everything up as much as possible so she can tsk and scold and enjoy every minute of telling him how he needs to find himself a nice girl to settle down with as she scrubs his apartment.

In those moments when Luke can forget that he's halfway disgusted (and the place isn't usually this bad – he just got back from Talladega on Wednesday, did three interviews on Thursday and met with a sponsor yesterday, not to mention going out with Cale last night) he's almost relaxed. Slouching, in the folding chair that Bo pulled out of the closet for him to sit in, just like he used to do in the General's passenger seat. Just watching time go by without trying to catch up to it or accomplish anything important, like saving the family or the day or all of Hazzard from its own foolishness. Sipping on his beer and trying to let the sugary Chef Boyardee spaghetti in his stomach digest, maybe trying to decide whether they're abiding by farmhouse rules, which allow no audible burping, or camping rules where pretty much anything goes.

Bo can see the minute his cousin's brain kicks back in, can practically hear the clicks and smell the thoughts burning in that big old head of his. About how he really shouldn't be here, the agreements they made and then there's always the Georgia border than has to be crossed by midnight or his cousin might just turn into a pumpkin. Of the incarcerated variety. He reckons Luke has good enough reasoning for what he's thinking.

And Bo's got no argument against it, other than he has seen more of Luke in the past month than he did for three years prior, and if it hasn't necessarily been easy, it's been—

He sighs. Doesn't mean to; can't trust Luke's reaction to it. Whether it'll hasten his retreat or make him feel angry for things he can't change, make him be kind and gentle when he feels the opposite or make him start asking questions neither of them wants to answer.

But he can't help it, the sigh is just acknowledgement of how much they've screwed up their lives. Or he has, it was him that kissed first, after all. Kissed away what was simple: they were best friends, raised like brothers but always firmly reminded that they were actually cousins. Common interests and common enemies made them constant, easy companions, made sure he was never lonely for a minute in his life because he always had Luke by his side. (Even when Luke might just have spared himself a whipping by putting a bit of distance between them.) Oh, maybe he's embellishing it just a little; they did have a fight or two along the way and he can remember that miserable night that Luke spent sleeping on his belly and refusing to speak to him after he tried to take his Louisville Slugger to Bo's head. But mostly, they had themselves a really good life together until Bo went and made them into something else, something they were never meant to be. If only he'd been less impulsive—

But no. He wouldn't want to give up those days of sunshine and romping, rolling in the grass and kisses. Luke, hot and close, letting him run nervous fingers over his skin like he was trying to read the braille of goose bumps as they rose to meet his touch. Kissing him back, rubbing and grinding and even that one time they did more than that, it was more good than bad.

Like he can see the pictures in Bo's mind, Luke starts in with the excuses that aren't as thin as Bo would like them to be. About speed limits and curfews, about the probation that Bo escaped but Luke is still beholden to.

Bo wants to grab him with both arms and keep him here, but he just smiles sadly and gets to his feet to follow Luke to the door. Pause there, Luke's hand on the knob and he turns around. Those blue eyes, catching in the light from what passes for a dining room, staring at Bo with all the intensity in the world. Almost audible wetness as his lips part just slightly, maybe getting ready to say goodbye or take care or even recite the Pledge of Allegiance for all either of them know. Doesn't matter, pink tongue makes a quick lap across lower lip and Luke ought to know better, ought to be perfectly familiar with the limits of Bo's resistance.

"Luke," is all the warning he gives, then his hands find a grip on Luke's arms, just above the elbows, and shove him until his back is up against the door. Kissing, hard and rough, like years of pent up pressure forcing itself loose all at once. Luke's lips under his, warm and, as always, surprisingly soft, sprinkled with the remnant flavors of tomato sauce and St. Pauli Girl beer, and then that glorious moment when they part and let Bo in.

* * *

Doorknob. Right there at his hip and he wants to shift his weight away from it but he doesn't. Tips his head just slightly to the right instead, hears a quiet murmur of thanks from Bo as he settles his weight against him so his hands can slide up from where they were clenched around him. Rustle of his shirt as they make their way to his shoulders, long fingers wrapping around and holding loosely.

And there's a doorknob in his hip.

But that's less important than his own hand finding its way to Bo's elbow, funny place to hold him but Luke cups it anyway. Lets his thumb stroke over the thin cotton of a thin sleeve and loops his other arm loosely around Bo's waist, thumb catching in a belt loop. No knife hooked on Bo's belt anymore, odd thing to get around to noticing now, but then again, the tail of his over-shirt hides where it would be visible.

And there's no knife on Luke's hip today either. But that doorknob is there and it's getting annoying.

Bo's hand on his face; he always has been a toucher. Thumb pressing against Luke's chin to get him to open his mouth that much wider, and Luke accommodates him. Feels Bo's tongue, the way it explores like this is all so new. Takes the opportunity to let go of Bo's elbow and find his belly. Stroking and sensing the way muscles and skin shift as Bo sucks in a desperate breath through his nose. Hungry and eager and—

Another slight shift to the tilt of Bo's head, distracting how good the boy is at kissing. Instinctive, like his driving, quick and reckless but confident as anything. Luke's hand finding its way under the hem of Bo's tee shirt and the soft skin waiting there for him to stroke. Hot. Either that or his fingers are cold, and he can feel the puff of air against his cheek as it escapes from Bo's nose. Can feel the fact that Bo likes what his hands are doing in the way his tongue answers back, in the way that hand on his face pulls at his chin just a little more.

Doorknob, it hurts and he can't quite bring himself to care, can't get his brain to think or his legs to shuffle, his mouth to complain or his hands to stop now that they're both underneath Bo's shirt, stroking skin and making him groan into the kiss.

Can't care about anything at all except doing precisely what he's doing.

_(Four days and not a single good thing in any of them. He could say it had been a whole week and that would almost be true, but in between that first Saturday and the second there had been some quiet times. Moments here and there when Bo wasn't a jerk. Before his every word grated against Luke's ears, before his eyes got starry and unfocused, before he started stumbling around the county like a man crippled by lovesickness._

_Daisy, patting Luke's arm and taking his side without even knowing half the story, and Jesse after them – after him, really, because Jesse had never gone after Bo a day in his life – to just simmer down. To talk and to listen to each other but what was the point when everything Bo had to say was absolute nonsense?_

_And Diane. She was just an opportunist, just passing through on her way from here to there. Looking for the first fool whose ego was bigger than his brains, and she had no right to know Bo as well as she did. To read him like the oldest book in her library and be so sure about the ending before she'd gotten through chapter one._

_Bo walked right into her – trap was too sophisticated and gave her too much credit – wiles and never looked back. Deafened his ears to every perfectly reasonable objection when everyone they knew offered them. Bo could act like it was just Luke not believing in him, but he couldn't believe it, not deep in his soul. Not when everyone in town, even the decidedly dimwitted sheriff's department, was trying to warn him of the dangers, too._

_Luke told himself it was Bo's life he was worried about. That it had only been days since that Cedar City stunt driver had crashed into that pile of parked cars in an ugly fireball, and there Bo was, offering up his pretty self to be the next victim. That funerals were expensive and really, he'd already been to more than his fair share before he had even reached the age of five. That Jesse's heart would be broken and his spirit not far behind; everyone from here to Chickasaw knew Bo was the old man's favorite._

_He told himself that his own pride had nothing to do with it, that Diane dismissing him as Bo's babysitter (and Bo not pausing for even a second to defend him) had nothing to do with anything he did and said afterward. That he didn't care or even really notice the way that Bo closed his eyes when he kissed Diane, and smiled at her after like she tasted better than chocolate chip cookies._

_But when Bo's fist hit his face –_ I ain't got no regrets about nothing, especially not this _– he reckoned he'd been lying to himself. All through that stupid race that Bo could have driven with his eyes closed (and Luke could have, too, but no one asked him to or even considered whether he could), through that crawdad bisque lunch that Bo walked out on, through two days of tuning and retuning and triple tuning the General. Through that ridiculous traffic stop on Route 36 where Luke pretended Rosco had even half of a legal leg to stand on in impounding the General, through that moment when he watched Bo's heart break and his trust in Luke die a horrible death when he learned that both he and the General had been betrayed. Through that endless drive to the junkyard and the fistfight with the foreman and crane operators, through the drive home and the argument that had just been waiting for the most public moment to break out. He'd been telling himself that his every word and deed had been to save Bo from Diane and the way she could play him, but it wasn't true. Hadn't ever been._

_It hit him like a sledgehammer when he found his feet after Bo's uppercut had flattened him. What a waste it was, the effort to get up when he was only going to tackle Bo to the ground again, chickens scattering in their wake. When he was going to wrestle him because punches left bruises and blood and Bo's face was too pretty for that kind of destruction. And he knew that Jesse was right there, that Daisy was probably there, too, halfway hiding behind the old man. But he really would have figured that Bo would find a way to grab him or rub against him or grind down to release the tension. To let him know that he was just frustrated or annoyed or upset by the way Diane had twisted the whole family up into her black widow's web, but it never happened. Not even so much as an accidently grazing of anything at all, because all Bo wanted was back on his feet. Away from him, and in all their lives Bo had never wanted away._

_He hit Bo, then, of course he did. A pulled punch that was nothing worse than a slap meant to wake Bo up and snap him out of it. Didn't work so he hit a little harder, just enough to take Bo down. To get him to the ground and pin him there until his temporary, Diane-induced deafness cleared up and he would listen to reason. Or until his body remembered what his brain had forgotten about who mattered most in his life. But the damn fool got to his feet again._

_One more crashing blow of Bo's fist to his face, the way it echoed up through his head, metallic taste of blood in his mouth from where his teeth sliced into his cheek, and suddenly this was the real thing. A fight between Duke boys that had never been allowed, hadn't ever happened in the generations before them. Might just have been easier for Jesse to watch them rolling around with their hands in each other's pants than for the old man to see this._

_Not that it mattered, one more shot while Luke was still reeling from the last one. Hit a bruise left over from the junkyard fight, hit a nerve that might just have been his last one. Seeing red and hearing his own bell rung, and he hit Bo then. Hit him to hurt him, saw the way he stumbled until he tripped backwards onto a pile of hay bales, Saw his gaping mouth and bleeding nose and dumb shock. Figured, maybe, just maybe, Bo had learned something. About girls and their rightful place, and how family always, always, always came first._

_But –_ I guess this farm's gotten a bit too small for both me and Luke _– the brat hadn't learned a damn thing. Sure, Luke had told him to find a girl, but not an opportunist like Diane. Some nice girl who wouldn't ask too much, who wouldn't try to take more than her fair share. Who knew better than to try to wrest a boy (because Bo wasn't a man yet, despite his assertions to the contrary) from his kin and the only people who had ever really loved him. He was supposed to find a Hazzard girl who had more boobs than brains._

I reckon it's Luke that's got to do some of the realizing.

 _And he did, right then and maybe only for that moment, realize that it wasn't Bo's life that he was so worried about. Heck, he was halfway willing to wring that skinny neck himself right now if that was what it took. What he wasn't willing to give up and what Diane was taking from him by force (but she could succeed with Bo as willing conspirator) was the way Bo listened and responded to him. When everything else got thrown away, it was undeniable. Bo had been_ his _since they were kids._

_Everything that followed had been a blur. Two days as miserable as the ones that had come before them, with Bo moving to the fairgrounds where Luke couldn't even get to him followed by Jesse calling what Bo was doing with Diane "love." As if it was possible to love someone you'd known for all of a few days after a lifetime of loving someone else. Getting arrested by Enos, getting bailed out than dragged off he the fairgrounds that stunk of old popcorn, oil and all of Luke's failures to reach Bo thus far. Stunk even worse when he left without having made even the slightest dent in Bo's thick skull (and with Diane smirking as though she'd known she would win all along), and then it was meeting the insurance investigator. Learning what he'd always halfway known – that Bo's life actually did need saving._

_Everything else stopped mattering._

_Bo could be a fool, and he could punch Luke across the face as many times as he wanted to. He could even run off with Diane and call it love, as long as he stayed alive._

_He forgot about anything else, forgot rolling on the ground with Bo that first time and how he'd known it was wrong and still he wanted to do it all over again the second it was done, forgot that he'd spent the last couple of days so mad at Bo that he was on the verge of ripping him apart piece by piece, forgot to be aloof and uncaring. Forgot everything but finding the root of the danger and putting a stop to it, even if Bo obstructed his every effort. Forgot everything but keeping Bo alive._

_Eventually, as it always had before, the crisis ended. He sat next to Bo as his cousin pulled the stupidest stunt of either of their lives, Bo came home, Diane left town. Should have been over, just another tall tale to tell in their old age and to anyone on the outside, it was. Jesse feeding them crawdad bisque as a bookend to the whole mess and Bo hugging Daisy like he was just that happy to be within the four walls of the farmhouse again. For a day, almost two, even Luke halfway bought into it._

_Except for how Bo was pouting, sulking over that girl and even if Luke figured that most of it was just to play on Daisy and Jesse's sympathies, it had to stop. Had to be done, because those four days with nothing good in them had been long enough, there was no reason to go dragging them on for four more. But he had to wait, had to be the gentle and concerned older cousin, patting Bo on the back and assuring him that there were no hard feelings, nothing hard at all—_

_Took almost forty-eight hours for Daisy to stop all but bottle feeding Bo as if he were a baby goat, for Jesse to stop watching over him like he was waiting for Bo to crack into pieces. But by Tuesday morning Daisy had to go count glasses or liquor bottles or forks – whatever it was that Boss reckoned had gone missing from the Boar's Nest this time – and Jesse figured it was about time to start preparing Maudine for the harvest. It was only a month away, you know, and the old girl didn't take to anything without a lot of fair warning (and liniment). It was as good an excuse as any for Luke to grab the keys and head out to the General, knowing full well that Bo would follow without thought. A complaint or two about how he didn't know why Luke got to drive without a proper vote or at least a coin toss, but that was easily enough ignored and just about the time that he had the engine started, Bo managed to get over his objections and slide into the passenger side with a dejected thump._

_Poor fellow had just lost his girl and all, broken-hearted and now his only solace, driving, was being firmly denied him. Luke tried to be sympathetic, tried to feel bad about it, and failed. Just put his foot down and kicked up rocks, skirted out onto Old Mill Road and disappeared into their usual cloud of dust. Did a few of their habitual loops around the dirt roads, hopped Willow Creek then hopped back, checked the ridge that ran along the south line of their property and angled down along the bed of Dry Creek. All the nearest speed traps and overlooks to the Duke farm were clear of any men in blue, so he headed on around to the north edge of their land where the bramble grew unfettered and the entrance to the Rainbow mine was still boarded over from the last time he and Bo had been down there. Bounced over rocks and sticks and ignored the fact that Bo stood ready to complain about the way Luke was driving or where he was taking them. Found that old clearing in the trees where they'd hidden from Rosco more than a few times, and skidded to a stop. Just let the engine idle, sat there and thought._

" _Luke," Bo said and that was all it took. Whatever words were coming next, whatever he wanted to complain about or ask for, Luke just plain didn't want to hear it. He turned off the car, kicked the floorboards and grabbed onto the roof to pull himself out. About the time his first foot hit the ground, Bo's fluffy head made an appearance on the other side, and he pulled himself out, too. "What?" said in response to the way Luke was walking around to the passenger side or to the way he was looking at him. To what he wasn't saying and Bo might just have figured out that Luke was angry._

" _I reckon," Luke said, kept his voice even. Kept from yelling, because there had always been a thing about that. From when they were kids and he wasn't supposed to yell at his younger cousins no matter what they were doing, he was supposed to keep a calm tone. Not to scare them or upset them and it only went one way. Bo was allowed to yell at him without reprimand or repercussion. "It's about time you stopped mooning over Diane."_

_Bo's hands went to his hips, his eyebrows down, face slightly flushed and his mouth opened. All prepared to shout his innocence or his right to feel bad or—and then it just stopped. Mouth closed and eyes squinted. Looked frustrated, waved a hand through the air in some kind of dismissal. Chin dipping and he could pass for sad. Downright upset._

" _Damn it, Bo." Because any second now he was going to cry and what good would that do either of them?_

" _What am I supposed to do, Luke? What am I—" working back up to angry all over again. "Allowed to do? You push me away and tell me to go find some girl. I find some girl, first girl I've really liked in two years and you just got to get between us. Got to tell me how she's too smart for me and she's using me, and I'm just an idiot for wanting to be with her."_

" _Well, I was right about her wasn't I?" Maybe he figured this was how it had to start. "She was using you." That he had to let Bo hit him first. Because he'd gotten in that one good hit during their last fight, because he couldn't move first. Bo had to start it this time like he'd started it every time before. Like he'd started everything that had ever happened between them._

_The punch, when it came, wasn't the half of what Luke thought it would be. It hurt, but only because his face was still sensitive from getting hit so many times a few days back – bruises only half faded away and there they were, getting smacked all over again. Wasn't much of a hit, all things considered, but he went with the momentum of it anyway, stumbled back a step or two, then set his feet and moved forward. Took Bo down at the knees._

_No chickens squawking this time, no Daisy yelling at them to stop. No Jesse and his shotgun, no one to care that they were shoving and rolling, Bo's elbow catching him across the face to leave yet one more mark on top of the others. Familiar taste of blood where his tooth must have cut into his cheek again, hard jut of a stone into his shoulder as they rolled one more time and Bo cussing low under his breath when he went right over a raised root and got roughly stopped by the trunk of a tree. A second or two for Luke to wonder whether he needed to call a halt to this thing and figure out if Bo was really hurt and then it was what it should have been back on Thursday afternoon. Kissing, and he figured Bo must have started it, didn't think he had, even if he'd wanted to. Even if he'd set it up perfectly he'd told himself that Bo had to start it and now he reckoned it must have worked out that way._

_Kissing, but it wasn't nice, still a fight everywhere from their legs to their lips. Bo's hand gripping his shoulder and trying to push him onto his back, Luke's knee finding room between Bo's. The rubbing started then, just as fresh as a new discovery, and even through two layers of denim he could feel Bo getting hard. He gave, then, let Bo roll them over and settle on top of him. Let him kiss and rub and fight all he needed to while Luke's fingers found the hem of that old blue tee shirt. Filthy again, covered in dirt and grass stains instead of hay this time, and he reckoned they were going to have to come up with some excuse about the state of their clothes later. For now it was enough just to let his fingers slip up until they found skin, warm and smooth. Sweat from fighting helping his hands slide easily and find new peaks and dips to explore. Ways to make Bo's breath hitch and heave, to make the kiss stutter and stop in a series of pants._

_Luke rolled them over again, away from the tree but that didn't mean the ground was even and Bo grunted as he fell over onto his back. Some little whined complaint and then it was right back to fighting for dominance. Bo catching Luke's lip in his teeth like the threat of what he could do and it didn't take much to put a stop to that. One palm pressing against the bulge in Bo's pants was enough distraction to make him forget any objections he might have had._

_Hands on his belt and Luke let Bo have at it because he was busy using one of his own to hold up his weight and the other was distracting Bo, leaving him with none for practical matters. Jingle of metal, heralding Bo's success at his self-appointed task and Luke's zipper grated open like an audible sigh of relief. Bo's hand around him—_

_They rolled again, the brat figured he had him this time, could get what he wanted and Luke just kept right on rolling. Away, which wasn't exactly any more fun for him that it was for Bo, but it gave him access to his own feet. To his boots, which he pulled off to make way for better things. Kept his pants on for now, but Bo got the hint and took it to the extreme. Trying to get rid of his own jeans, getting flustered when he tried to get them off without getting rid of his boots first. Luke took the opportunity to stand and pick his way across the twigs and rocks to get back to the General. Opened the trunk and pulled out the blanket, felt the firm resistance of the bottle wrapped up inside and had second thoughts. Or first ones, when he was honest with himself, because he had gotten this far on want and need alone, shutting logic out of his brain. Until now._

" _Bo," he said, turning around with some intent to stop this thing before it got too far. Expected to find him still in the dirt fighting with his footwear but he was wrong about that. Funny how quickly his cousin could move when he wanted something, because there he was, standing right next to Luke._

" _What is it this time, Luke?" So put out, so ridiculous, hands on his hips and naked from the waist down. "You going to tell me to go out and find some girl again?" No underwear because he never wore it, and the long tails of his yellow shirt hanging loose, leaving him wide open to the world. "Because I can do it, won't take me no time at all." Sure enough, if he didn't get arrested for indecent exposure first, Bo could just walk through the town square right now and girls would probably flock to him. "And when I get her here, you can damn sure bet that she won't be putting me off with some stupid complaint about how we can't do this because it ain't—" ended in a squawk when Luke grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and pulled him forward. Faces bumping together and there went another bruise they'd have to explain later, but for now they were back to kissing because Luke had no need whatsoever to hear what Bo could get from a girl. He knew exactly what Bo could get from a girl and he knew he'd gotten plenty of it from Diane, too._

_On their feet, couldn't remember ever kissing like this before, at least not since Bo had grown taller than him. Different feel this way, easier to wrap an arm around Bo's neck and pull him to exactly where he was wanted, easier for his other hand to grip Bo's upper arm and knead at it. Even easier for lazy Bo to wrap his arms low around Luke's waist and just hold on. Easy to get lost in the kiss and let it idle like the General at the starting line of the Hazzard Derby._

_Bo's leg like the cannon to signal the start of the race and the length of it wrapped around both of Luke's, hand shoving his shoulder back and there was nothing to do, no way to catch himself, except by hanging onto Bo's neck. Movement stalled there and for a glorious second it seemed like they might even stay on their feet, then Bo tipped forward._

" _Bo," he growled when he landed on his ass on the packed dirt next to the General. Got a grin back even if it looked like Bo had landed worse than he had. A giggle and any protestations ignored in favor of Bo grabbing the blanket and flipping it open. Brown bottle of Daisy's tanning oil rolled out but that wasn't important to the man spreading the blanket. Same one they'd used on dozens of dates with girls, but it'd been washed in the creek after every one of those and it was clean enough now. Softer than the ground and just maybe Luke was happy enough to crawl onto it and ready to forget how rudely he'd been shoved to the ground._

_Especially when Bo crawled right up to where he was sitting and the kissing started again. The boy was good enough at that and Luke's sore backside, the thick heat of the day and the stone under his leg all stopped mattering in deference to what Bo's lips and tongue were doing. Luke's arm around his neck again, settling him there and they were right back to where they'd been. Just about and it had been nice enough, but where they'd been was not at all where they were going. Not this time._

_Took a little effort to shove Bo over and down, to get him on his back but once he understood the movement he went willingly enough. Gave him free hands to explore Luke's ribs, to slide on the sweat until they were back at his open belt. Fiddling with the button as Luke settled between his legs, elbow on the ground and holding his weight up, hands under Bo's shoulders and gripping. More kissing, different this way. Bo just accepting what Luke was giving, no longer doing his half the work and it wasn't as good. Gave it up after a few seconds and set to exploring Bo's throat. Lips finding sensitive spaces while Bo was pulling uselessly at his pants and the shorts underneath, trying to get them down but it wasn't working when Luke wasn't helping. Taste of old sweat and Daisy's laundry soap, wasn't doing much for either of them until Luke found a spot, just under Bo's left ear, that made him squirm. Hands off his jeans, then, frantically scrubbing up and down his back, and Luke smirked into the skin under his lips._

" _Luke," the complaint, too much teasing, too little pants removing, apparently. Bo's hands were down there again pushing and shoving and his nails catching in sensitive skin. So Luke left off bothering with Bo's neck and sat back long enough to get his own jeans down and off. Mostly, left leg was still caught around his ankle, but he figured they'd get around to wiggling enough to lose them completely in a minute or two._

_Bo's hand reaching for his hardness out of some kind of instinct or habit; Luke caught him by the wrist before he could get there. Pinned that hand up by his ear and leaned over him to kiss again. Interesting how it changed everything to have his jeans gone, how they rubbed together accidentally at first and then quite deliberately as Bo arched his hips up. Frustration into the kiss and Bo's other hand tried to get between them, but Luke leaned to the side, grabbed it, too, and pinned it by Bo's other ear._

" _Luke," Bo complained again, but it didn't take much to get him to shut up. Just another kiss and his hips meeting Bo's halfway. Rubbing together and it was good, got better, got a little frantic. Breathing too heavily to kiss anymore, Bo's head turned to the side and panting and it was right about then that he spotted the bottle of tanning oil. (Or that his brain processed what his eyes had to have seen minutes ago.)_

" _Luke," caught somewhere between complaint and awe. "Is that for," pause there because it was hard enough to talk, much less think. "For what I think?"_

_Luke gave him a casual shrug. At least he hoped it was casual, might just have been spastic and jerky, couldn't be sure with how his stomach had just dropped and the blood was rushing far too quickly through him, all heading to the same place._

" _It was your idea." Back in the heart of summer when they were just supposed to be doing a little innocent skinny-dipping, but they'd been wrapped around each other, kissing and grinding._

" _Yeah, but," a little bit of squirming underneath him, Bo trying to prop himself up on his elbows or get some leverage to sit up. "I was thinking I'd do it to you, not—" grunt when he had to give up and lie back down. "You doing it to me."_

_Of course he had. And Duke fairness might just dictate that since Bo was the first to think it through to a conclusion he ought to get first dibs. Or so Luke might have convinced himself, if his obnoxious cousin hadn't spent four days acting like a jackass about Diane Benson._

" _Bo," he said, and it took more than breath to say it. Took some sort of willpower that seemed just about superhuman. "You don't want to do this, say so now."_

_Funny look on his cousin's face because he wanted it well enough, but not this way. He let go of Bo's left hand and reached down to grab a leg instead. Pulled it up to his own waist to show how this would go and waited just about as patiently as a man in his state could be expected to. Finally got his answer – Bo using his free hand to grab his neck and bring him down for a deep kiss – and the rubbing started up again. Better this time because of how they were so nicely aligned._

_Took a reasonable amount of effort and teamwork to work out all the particulars, but he and Bo had always had a special talent for getting themselves in far, far too deep. Took longer than he might have hoped to get Bo to relax for him, to be gentle with his hands and distracting in his kisses to get him past the pain. After that the pleasure was far too brief, breathless, sweaty, too awkward in their shared movement to kiss, but the intent was there. Building, heart pounding, that coil in his stomach getting tighter and tighter and then it was—_

_Colors behind his eyelids, skin tingling everywhere, thoughts a jumbled mess. Hand on Bo stroking until his release came with a strangled gasp and Luke held onto him then. Kept him close. Running his hands over sweaty skin and listening to Bo calm himself down._

_Knew then, that he was doomed. That they couldn't do this if they couldn't tell Jesse, and they couldn't tell Jesse because it would kill him. Knew then what he'd known once before when he was still a foolish teen._

_He had to leave Hazzard._

_The next afternoon, while Daisy was at work and Jesse had Bo drive him into town to pick up some oats for Maudine, Luke dug into his wallet and pulled out a card that'd been in there, untouched, for almost a year now. Called Cale Yarborough and asked him to put in a good word about one Luke Duke as a potential crew member for a NASCAR team – any team, didn't matter which, as long as they weren't based in Georgia.)_

He shoves against Bo's belly – not a nice thing to do and there's a little gasp of breath after. He should apologize, he should hug his cousin because he's hurt him (more than once and not just with his hands) and they were raised to say their sorrys for that kind of an offense.

"Bo," he says instead, and it's got an angry edge to it. Like he can blame Bo for this but it's his own fault. He should have insisted that Daisy bring Bo back here, and if she hadn't wanted to, he should have left his cousin at the curb. Shook his hand and wished him well and—

Door knob. It was against his hip and now, just like that, it's in his hand. Still warm from where he was pressed against it, all of him is still warm from Bo. Door is open and the outside is warm too; could really have done with some cool air.

Looks back, Bo's face is pink, his lips red and he's just as pretty as he ever was when he was all of fifteen and innocent.

"I got to go," he explains, though neither of them needs him to. Bo just nods and watches him walk out the door.


	7. Chapter 7

"I'm coming," he grumbles in response to the second knock on his door. The first woke him and probably shouldn't have. Or maybe should have woken him more quickly or thoroughly because he didn't exactly bounce up after it. Now he's stumbling toward the door while pulling a shirt over his shoulders. Squinting against the sunlight invading his apartment through that bay window, doubly bright because it's reflecting off Lake Norman. He doesn't know what time it actually is – the only working clock is in the kitchen and his eyes are too bleary to read it just yet – but it's probably past noon. Not that it matters; the hammer knocking in his skull combined with washing machine spinning his stomach make plenty clear that he could do with a few more hours of sleep.

He rubs his face with the hand that's not still getting his shirt straight on his shoulders, squints against the sunlight invading his apartment and thinks maybe he should have pulled the blinds on his way to bed, but he seems to recall that he was lucky just to find his way safely across his apartment last night. Wednesday between the Busch and the Southern, the first two in a string of relatively local races, and NASCAR's Team Reed has a tradition of celebrating on Wednesdays when they're home. Wins or near-wins or just plain halfway points to the next possible win – doesn't matter, they don't need a reason other than being able to easily stumble to their own beds at night. Butch leaves them alone on non-travel Thursdays, though Bo doesn't know which came first, the day off from physical training or the celebrating. Not that it's important now, when he has already celebrated and reckons that he's entitled to his sleep.

But some of the guys just can't get enough and are raring to go again on Thursday night, too. Bo has been known to accompany them, but only to get a little hair of the dog. And only after a full day to sleep off the night before.

"Dang it, Itchy," he hollers, making bad into worse because the knocking hurts his head from the outside in and yelling hurts it from the inside out. Picking up his pace toward the door a little, reaching out and grabbing the knob, since that's about the only thing that's going to stop that infernal knocking. "I said I was coming," he finishes as he flings the door open.

Luke's standing there, tucking in his shirt tail even if it hasn't come out, some kind of half-amused twist to his lips.

"Itchy?" he says, but the muscles in his cheek and jaw are set just a bit too firmly. Not to mention the way his shoulders bunch when his fingers jab at that shirt with near-violence. Like Jesse when he's getting ready to dole out a whipping.

"Luke," he answers back, and hugs him anyway. Quick, while Luke's hands are still occupied with all that unnecessary tucking, because crowding into Luke's space has been known to be dangerous if he's in a foul mood. Which he might well be, but Bo comes away from the gesture with all his parts intact so he reckons he fared all right. Even if he doesn't exactly get a full-hearted hug in return. Maybe that's just because it's only been a fwe weeks since they last saw each other, or because neither Jesse or Daisy is here to gauge just how happy they are to see each other.  (And that's a really good question.  How happy are they to see each other?)

"Itchy?" Luke says again. "You look like hell," gets added before Bo can even begin to explain.

"I feel like hell," he concurs, steps back and makes a sweeping gesture for Luke to come in. "But it won't last long." Because it never really does. He's had more opportunity to get stinking drunk followed by painfully sober over the past three years than he ever dared to in younger days when his uncle was likely to assign extra chores for slow-moving, red-eyed boys. Luke would always stubbornly do more than Jesse even asked of them, but Bo preferred not find himself in that position. So it took him coming out to NASCAR to learn a trick or two about dealing with hangovers. Butch taught him about drinking a lot of water and Itchy Itzkowitz, the pit crew fueler that lives in this complex and likes his Thursday night 'second celebrations' more than the average guy, taught him about greasy breakfasts. "Want some sausage?" he asks as Luke steps into his apartment, closes the door behind him and watches Bo head for the refrigerator. He pulls a bright yellow box of sausages out of the freezer and looks to see what Luke's answer is. All he gets is a cocked up eyebrow that questions the wisdom of eating anything at all that calls itself sausage but comes out of a frosty cardboard packaging.

But really, his cousin has no right to judge. Because honestly, he would never have come to this if he hadn't been sent out on the NASCAR circuit when he was barely twenty and hardly ready to fend for himself.

 _("Bo," Luke said, and he didn't like the sound of that_ Bo _. Didn't like how hesitant and careful it was. Didn't like, and hadn't liked for three days now, the way Luke's eye was still bruised and swollen from that prize fight with Catfish Lee. Boss had instigated it, but Bo had been right in there pushing for Luke to do it. Maybe he'd really believed it was the best way to save the farm from Boss's clutches and maybe he'd been more than a little upset that Luke had refused to touch him any more than was strictly necessary (or accidental) in the two weeks since that afternoon in the back fields – when Luke had been rough and gentle all at once, and his eyes had been so damned blue in the sunlight – and maybe he'd wanted some sort of stupid revenge for how he was getting halfway ignored. Whatever the reason behind it, Luke had taken the fight and then taken a beating that Bo could hardly bear to watch, and now he was bruised and sore, and getting ready to say something that Bo wasn't entirely sure he wanted to hear. "There was a scout in the stands at the Choctaw County Classic last Saturday."_

" _Yeah?" It had been a good race, but then Choctaw always had been good for the General. The bank of the curves and the soft red dust always did work in the Duke boys' favor. "Some hot shot from the North Georgia Stock Car Association?" He and Luke had gotten a couple of offers to join the association in the past year or so. They'd always turned them down; too many rules and regulations, too many restraints and they weren't willing to give up what they already had. Not unless it was for a crack at the big time. NASCAR._

_Luke let out a breath. Not quite a sigh, more of a little huff and looked up. Stopped fussing with the knot he'd squatted down to untie from the ropes that they had used to mark off a temporary boxing ring in their own farmyard. Jesse had been good natured about it when they put it up because it was a means to save the farm, but he'd started hinting pretty powerfully that it needed to be dismantled, the ropes properly coiled, the posts pulled up and all of it stored neatly in the barn. They'd only gotten away with leaving it up until today because Luke had been complaining of a headache ever since the fight. Bo wasn't entirely sure that his head was any better today, but Luke seemed to be up and about, and making a good show of ignoring any pain._

" _Nope. He was from North Carolina. A guy named Dave Mays." That was nice, seemed like a relatively good thing. Didn't explain why Luke was squinting up at him, carefully watching his face. Unless it was another offer that they'd have to turn down because they couldn't travel freely, what with their probation and all. "He works for Doug Reed."_

_Doug Reed? He only knew of one Doug Reed, and it couldn't be that Doug Reed. "Doug who?"_

" _Of the Reed driving team. You know, the ones Cale drove with before he moved over to Ranier." Luke stood up, meeting him eye-to-eye or as close as he could come since Bo had grown those extra inches while he was away in the Marines. Still watching him far too closely and it made him uncomfortable. Made him wonder what could make Luke quite this nervous when there was no one nearby with a gun or handcuffs and no one was offering to read them their Miranda rights._

" _Cale?" he asked, though he knew perfectly well who Cale was and how he was connected to Doug Reed. "So a NASCAR scout was at that race?"_

" _Yeah," Luke said back, quietly. Looked back down at the ropes because they really should be working on getting them put away. "He was impressed with you, Bo."_

_This ought to be a much louder discussion. Maybe held in their kitchen or even the Boar's Nest where everyone they knew could hear it. (Or most everyone. Enos was gone and it was so hard to believe; the fool had run off to Los Angeles to try to make his mark on the world. Or to get over his eternally broken heart because Daisy never had seen fit to return his affections.) Ought to involve yelling and jumping around and hugging, beers getting passed around and drunk up far too fast._

" _Wait, you mean we got a NASCAR scout interested in us?" He ought to be smiling. Why was his heart thumping far too furiously and his stomach sinking like a stone in quicksand? "How come you know this and I don't?"_

" _You know it now, don't you?" Luke growled. Then made a face that was somewhere between annoyed and—he didn't even know. Not one of his usual frustrated faces, anyway. It had some sort of regret in it. "He called this morning, Bo. When you was spending an hour in the bathroom making yourself pretty."_

" _I don't spend an hour in there." Couldn't even if he wanted to; Daisy would barge right in and pull him out by one tender body part or another if he tried. "And you ain't never complained about me being pretty before, neither." He smiled back into Luke's frown because – this had to be a good thing, didn't it? Luke was just being his pessimistic self, assuming the worst. That Boss wouldn't let them go, or the contract wouldn't let them come home for planting and harvest (but if it didn't they'd still be making enough money to let Jesse hire some field hands), or that this would all turn out to be some kind of a nasty trick. Surely that was all._

" _He wants to see you drive again. I told him we'd meet him at the fairgrounds and you could show him what you can do. He probably ain't never jumped a gully before." Little smirk on Luke's face after those last words, and sure. It had to be just his worrywart older cousin getting concerned about all the worst possibilities when there wasn't any reason to believe they would come true. "Day after tomorrow."_

_He punched Luke on the arm – half for making him worry so much about what was ultimately the best news he'd had since he'd learned Luke was coming home from the Marines – and grinned. "Day after tomorrow," came out in a breath. "Yeah, that sounds good. We got to get the General over to Cooter's and make sure he's in top shape." But not yet. He got down, his knee letting out a little pop on the way, and started to pick at the closest knot._

_Luke just stood there and looked at him like he'd lost his mind. Like the last thing he expected was for Bo to voluntarily put himself to work. But the sooner they did what Jesse wanted, the faster they could get to checking the General's timing._

_Dave Mays turned out to be a little guy, kind of square and squat. Dressed in jeans that Bo would swear his mama must have made for him because there just weren't clothes that shape in any store, and his hair in a black rat's nest. But he was smart – he could list off all of Bo's wins on the dirt track circuit, even ones that Bo had halfway forgotten. And he could add up numbers in his head – Bo knew he got the answers right because Luke lifted an eyebrow when he came up with their split times on the Choctaw County Classic._

_Luke hefted their new friend into the General and Bo got ready to tell him to get into the back so Luke could join them, but his cousin just walked around the car to the driver's side and wished him luck. It reminded him of how Diane had kissed him weeks ago in almost exactly this same spot and it made him wish that Mays wasn't there, so Luke would do the same. But that was silly, they wouldn't even be here if the scout didn't want to see him drive and if they made the NASCAR circuit they'd be out on their own. Luke would get over his objections and Bo would be able to kiss him any time they got behind closed doors._

_He smiled, told Luke they'd be back in a flash, and put his foot down on the pedal._

_It wasn't much of any real route that he took, more of a course that he made up as he went along. A couple of times around the track, out through the gate to the access road, then across country for a bit. Found a deer path and followed it to the bumpy bed of Dry Creek. Mays looked distinctly uncomfortable bouncing over rocks, and Bo thought to ask him if he was carsick, but decided it was best not to put ideas into the man's head. Last thing he needed was to be scrubbing vomit off the General's floorboards._

_He made his way back up to Cedar Cliff Road and skidded around in the dust a bit, then wound his way over to Jeb Tompkins back forty. Hopped the irrigation ditch, careened between two trees and made his way back out to the access road for the fairgrounds. Spared a look to see how Mays was doing, and figured he looked a little less green, though he was still staring resolutely out the windshield. Watching as Luke went from being a blue dot in the distance to being more distinct – could see his dark hair and boots, the way he was standing with his hands on his hips. The smile on his face, the way his shirt was plaid and not solid, the blue of his eyes, and the way he stood stock still as Bo skidded the car up to within six inches of him. Smoke and burnt rubber, squealing tires and then it was done. Just him and Dave Mays sitting in the idling General with Luke leaning down to rest his elbows on the doorsill. Waiting for some kind of verdict or decision or even just amazement._

" _Thank you," was what they got instead, and the man, who couldn't be any taller than Boss, not as heavy but still definitely solid, was grabbing at the doorsill on the passenger side, trying to get enough leverage to haul himself out. Luke trotted around to help._

" _Was there something else you wanted to see?" Bo asked, half panicked because he figured he'd done something wrong. What was it Luke said to him a few weeks ago_? The boys on that NASCAR circuit are the safest, steadiest drivers in the world. The last thing they want on that track with them is some carnival hotshot with a lead foot and a brain to match. _Maybe he should have listened to Luke or brought Luke along or let Luke—"Don't you want to see Luke drive?"_

_Funny thing how even as he was tugging on Dave Mays' underarms to help the guy up onto the door frame, Luke was shaking his head. At Bo's words or his stupid driving or at Mays for not knowing talent when he saw it, it was hard to tell. Bo turned off the engine and pulled himself out, joining Luke in walking the scout over to the plain brown Ford Granada that he'd shown up in. A car with no tricks at all up its sleeve and maybe Mays was in the wrong line of work. Maybe he ought to be a businessman and drive his plain car down perfectly safe highways to park it in a boring lot in front of a glass building._

" _I'll be in touch," was all Mays said before driving off._

_Bo figured it was just as well. Getting Boss Hogg to let him and Luke off their probation would have been plenty tricky anyway. Jesse would probably have had to take out a second mortgage on the farm when he could barely pay the first one. He clapped Luke on the shoulder and suggested a trip over to drown their sorrows in watered down liquor of the Boar's Nest, and his cousin had shrugged and gotten into the General's passenger side._

_It was days later. Maybe a week; long enough, anyway, to have just about forgotten about some stupid test drive that he'd apparently failed and to have begun all over again to resent the distance Luke was putting between them. A phone call for Luke during morning chores, leaving Bo to deal with Bonnie Mae and her goatly ill will toward him and his milking fingers. By the time he'd convinced her away from eating his hair, which she never had been able to distinguish from straw, and give up her paltry supply of milk into the bucket that he brought inside, Luke was off the phone and helping to set the table. Which was strange, his cousin preferred barn chores over kitchen chores any day of the week. But he could rationalize that: Daisy must have caught him in the house at the wrong moment and put him to work._

_Until breakfast was done and Luke insisted on taking a drive before they got sucked into the day's work. That was just plain obvious; something was up when Luke Duke decided that fun came before drudgery. And then there was Luke making a beeline for the driver's side of the car – something was definitely up._

_Timbertop Ridge, then cutting across moonshine trail number four to the back side of the Indian caves. No one had ever found them here. Luke cut the General's engine and sat while the car ticked and settled. Stared at his fingers clutching the steering wheel, still tan from a summer's-worth of work, lighter under his nails. Studying the colors and shapes or thinking heavy thoughts or—it didn't matter, whatever it was that Luke was doing, it was taking too long._

" _What, Luke?"_

_He looked at him then, those brilliant blue eyes and a smirk that got stuck on the one side of his face. Caught somewhere between amused and proud, but there was something else in there, too. Something old and vaguely familiar, but he couldn't place it or didn't want to think to hard about it. Thinking was for fools like Luke._

" _Talked to Cale this morning," his cousin said all casual-like, as if talking to a NASCAR driver was an everyday occurrence. "He said Dave Mays gave a good scouting report on you. He reckons an offer is coming in the next few days. Then a contract." A real smile then; didn't stay, but for a moment it was there. All the possibilities in the world opened up to them._

" _From the Reed Team?" A real NASCAR offer, not just some bush-league baby-step? Luke nodded, teeth nibbling at his bottom lip, eyebrows low and nearly knitted together at the middle. Strange look for a man who was about to have his lifelong dreams come true. "We're going to NASCAR?"_

_And oh, those eyebrows dipped even lower at that one. For the brief second Bo could see them, before Luke turned back to study his hands some more. Had to be fascinating, those hands that Luke had seen every day of his life, what with how hard he was concentrating on them._

" _You're going," Luke informed him. Looked up at him for a brave half a second, then back at his hands. Or the steering wheel or the dark, unmoving gauges and what did he mean, Bo was going?_

" _Wait, what—that's just, that's stupid, Luke. Ain't no way I'm going without you." It was Luke's dream before it was even his, Luke listening to races on that tinny transistor radio and talking about Richard Petty nonstop until Lavinia threatened to stick a bar of soap in his mouth just to make him stop. Luke's fascination with toy cars (and trying to take them apart to see how they were put together) that had started Bo's interest in the sport at all. Sure, Bo could drive better than him now, but Luke was no slouch. He could hold his own against any of those NASCAR drivers out on the track today, and—_

" _Bo, you'd be a fool to walk away from this offer. You turn this one down and there might not be another."_

" _I ain't turning nothing down, Luke." At least he didn't plan to, he just wanted to right a little wrong that had been half his fault anyway. If he couldn't fix it or it didn't work, he wasn't sure what he'd do, but he had no real plans of turning down the offer. "We just got to get Dave Mays back here to see you drive, too, is all. He don't know what you can do, Luke."_

" _Bo." A deep breath, in-and-out, like he was steeling himself, and finally he left off looking at his hands to face Bo. As much as was possible in the cramped quarters of their car. A little frown and he leaned forward like he always did when he was about to explain one of his plans. Bo leaned in to meet him halfway, even if he wasn't sure he wanted to know what Luke's brilliant idea was this time. "It's a good thing, you getting this offer. You can go out there and make a real name for yourself. And you can live the kind of life you was always meant to live." Same strange look in Luke's eyes, that thing Bo didn't like. Nervous or worried or—it wasn't anything Luke should be looking like when they were talking about a NASCAR offer._

_And the sort of life Bo was meant to live? What did that even mean when it seemed to leave Luke out? The Duke boys came as a matched set, half the time referred to by just the one name, Bo-and-Luke-Duke, they're-cousins. A package deal and they always had been even before—_

_Oh. Oh, and it was the kind of oh that went straight to the pit of his stomach and made him halfway sick._

_He stomped his foot onto the floorboards, hands up and trying to get out of the car. Needed more room, needed his own space away from Luke. (But only for a minute, only until the anger passed; didn't want away from Luke for more than a handful of seconds at a time.) Stupid wrong side of the car, harder to get out of and it took too long, too much effort, left him sweaty and frustrated from the effort. Luke's head coming up on the other side, maybe he figured that more room was good, too, maybe he already knew that they'd never finished their last fistfight and figured it was time to pick it up where they'd left off._

" _Damn it, Luke," he hollered, hopping around like a fool because his dang left foot hadn't made it all the way out of the car yet. Luke was out, about halfway around the hood like he was planning on coming to Bo's side to help him and damn it all, he didn't want Luke helping him. Tipped a bit to get the leverage he needed to get his foot free, stumbled, teetered and sat down hard into the crunchy brown leaves. Made a hell of a racket that would have gotten him in trouble when they were kids and had to be silent around still sites. Now it should have gotten him laughed at, but it didn't. Got Luke standing over him, eyebrows pulled together in the middle and wrinkling his forehead. "Leave me be," because in a second Luke was going to offer a hand down to help him stand and then he'd brush the dirt off Bo's back and ask if he was all right, and there was no need for it. Bo was a big boy, he could get to his feet all by himself._

_Luke's hands up like he was surrendering to Rosco, stepping back and watching Bo get to his own feet. Just giving him room, but Bo didn't want that either, so he stepped right up into Luke's face, finger pointing into his chest._

" _You been planning this all along," he accused, because suddenly it made sense. How Luke had known there was a scout in the first place, how all communication went through Luke, how no one ever mentioned that both Duke boys were NASCAR-caliber drivers. "Ain't you?"_

_A little wince in response to that, trying to disguise itself as an eye roll, but Luke's face was just a bit too flushed with guilt to make it believable._

" _Not exactly. Bo," because Luke was smart and sometimes that meant all manner of trouble, but this time it just meant that he knew he was about to get hit. Or shouted down and he wanted to talk first. To tell his side of it because Uncle Jesse always said there were two sides to every story and Luke wanted to be sure everyone knew his. Bo reckoned he could still hit him after all the talking got done. "After we…" had sex? Made love? Bo wasn't sure what to call it, didn't want to keep thinking of it as wrestling or rolling in the grass, but none of the other words for it were precisely right either. "After Diane," oh, but that was an entirely different thing. Sure, thing had led to the other, but Diane was a mistake. Luke was—well, he was starting to look like a mistake too, just an entirely different kind of mistake. "I wrote a letter to Cale, asking if there was any place for me on his crew. One of us has to go."_

" _What?" That was—one of them had to go? Bo leaned back, let that one finger that was pointing curl right back into his fist. Hitting Luke was looking like a better idea all the time._

" _Bo, just listen. One of us has to go because if we stay together I reckon that what happened," after Diane. The sex or the rolling in the grass, the things they didn't have a name for. "Will happen again."_

" _I don't reckon it would be so terrible if it did," he said because it was Luke. It was one thing to say to a girl,_ I want it to happen again _. She would understand, but Luke – Luke could only accept things in the backwards sense. Two noes to mean a yes._

" _It ain't terrible by itself Bo." Luke was doing that thing where he talked slow and deliberate. Like he was explaining something to the likes of Rosco Coltrane, but Bo wasn't anybody's fool. "Not if we could keep it between ourselves."_

" _We could." Of course they could; there were plenty of things that no one else knew about them. Or mostly they didn't – Jesse swore he knew they used to play hooky and exactly where, but if he had, why hadn't he stopped them? It had to be one of those tricks the old man used to get them to confess._

_He sighed the tension out of his body, let his hands drop uselessly to his sides._

" _No, we couldn't." Complete certainty in Luke's voice, but there was no reason to just assume the worst when they hadn't even tried yet and maybe it would be just fine. "If we stopped going out with girls every weekend, people would notice. And I don't figure either of us wants to watch the other get with girls." No, not particularly._

" _But if it's for a good cause," he figured he could stand it._

" _Ain't no such thing," Luke interrupted. "First of all, it ain't no fun to be on the watching side." Luke would know, he figured. Having watched him with Diane and it hadn't been fun to be on the receiving side of Luke's jealousy, either. (Until it had been, but the – love making? Sex? – had come after getting shoved to the ground without any amount of gentleness.) "But second, we got family to consider. And keeping it between us means keeping it from them." Or lying, at least as Luke saw it. Bo figured there were shades of the truth, but then again, his backside had been warmed more than a few times for picking the wrong shade. "You stand ready to tell Jesse what we been doing?"_

_No._

" _So I got to go to NASCAR and you get to stay here?" Not that he wanted Luke to go to NASCAR without him, either. He turned halfway away from Luke, felt the tears pricking at his eyes. Luke would call it pouting, but only because he didn't know what it felt like. How much it hurt his eyes and his throat, his whole face, and as miserable as they were right now, those would feel better in time. His heart, that was going to take a while. "Why can't we both go?"_

" _Just because we wouldn't be here don't make it okay keep things from our family. It'd still be wrong. Besides," had the ring of Luke trying to convince a revenuer that he most certainly didn't have moonshine in his trunk. Heck, he didn't even know what moonshine was, officer, he was just a nice boy out on an evening drive. "Cale never did find me no job. Maybe he figured I ain't got what it takes or maybe he decided if any Duke was going to go it ought to be you." Or maybe Cale just figured they were drivers, not mechanics, and was trying to get them both on the circuit, but Luke had carefully circumvented that by making sure that Bo was the one driving in the Choctaw County Classic, that Dave Mays only ever got to see one Duke boy behind the wheel. "It's NASCAR, Bo. You only been wanting it since you was old enough to pronounce it right." Said in such a gentle tone, almost sweet enough to believe Luke loved him._

_Walking away would be stupid; Luke would only follow after him. But the urge was there because as much as he wanted Luke, he also wanted to be away from Luke. To have time to pick over everything that had been said and not said, to figure out a better argument for staying or for Luke coming with him, or anything at all that kept them together._

_Luke let out a breath again, kept his distance. "Come on, coz," but it was like he could read Bo's mind about wanting to run off. "We got to get back to the farm or Jesse's gonna make us do double before he'll even think about giving us dinner." Bo didn't want to, but he got in the car._

_And he didn't want to go to NASCAR, either. Not without Luke. But he didn't want to lose what might be his only chance to go, either. And Luke was adamant; it was the only way. He could take the General with him, and Luke would stay behind and be a good adopted son of a farmer. He'd till and plant and Bo would race, and they'd both date nice girls and try to settle down. It was a reasonably good plan, all except the part where they had to be apart to do it. Bo couldn't think of a better plan, so when the offer came, he and Luke took it to Jesse. Luke laid out how it would work, with Bo earning money to hire in help when planting and harvest came, and Luke staying behind to do a lot of the work. Bo swallowed the lump in his throat and smiled about the prospect of racing against the big guys. And all of them went down to the courthouse to convince Boss to let him off his probation._

_Hadn't been hard at all; J.D. was thrilled to see the Duke boys split up. Bo gone and Luke still around to torment, must have felt like a dream come true. The contracts were signed and the date was agreed upon for him to report to Mooresville for training camp. Everything was all set. He convinced himself it would be a good thing._

_Until the night before he was supposed to leave. He waited until the house was quiet, until it had sighed and settled and stilled before he got up. One step, then his knee was on Luke's bed, his hip, his foot, his shoulder. His arm wrapped around Luke's body and his head buried – somewhere, he wasn't even sure. Luke didn't pretend to be surprised or annoyed, just put an arm around his shoulders and held on._

" _I don't want to leave you," he said, and it was watery and rough. Luke kissed his forehead, his cheek, used his face to nudge at Bo's until they were pressing their lips together and it was different than it ever had been before. Kissing just to kiss, with no hope of anything else. Tasting of salt and sadness, Luke's thumb stroking roughly across his cheek and jawbone. "Don't make me go," Bo said, when the kisses were done. Luke tightened his arm around him and rubbed at his back until he slept and dreamed of lazy days and the pond, just him and Luke and no other worries in the world._

_But when he woke up, he was alone. Luke was already out after the chores and Daisy was in the kitchen humming and cooking up a fine-smelling breakfast. His packed bags were by the back door and Jesse was setting a pile of folded blankets on top, because wherever he was going to end up that night, he might get cold._

_When breakfast was done and they all stood out on the porch, Luke shook his hand, Daisy wrapped her arms around his neck and told him how much she'd miss him, and Jesse got one of those specks in his eye and had to go inside. There was no reprieve to be found anywhere in his family's demeanor._

_So Bo got into the General and drove away, even if he had a speck or two in his own eyes.)_

"Itchy?" Luke says again, and Bo takes that as a no to his offer of frozen sausage. Shrugs and points out the coffee pot and filters on the thin sliver that passes for his kitchen counter. Luke's going to want some because he always does, and Bo reckons a couple of cups might help him a bit, too.

"Pit crew fueler," he explains and sets to tearing the perforated strip off the box, which seems determined to thwart his efforts. Too much glue on the packaging or his fingers are still drunk. Luke walks across the open space of his living room and into the galley of a kitchen. Grabs the box out of his hands and opens it, then starts digging around in the small cabinets under his counter. Bo says a silent prayer of thanks that Mathilda was just in two days ago and the place is much cleaner than when Luke was last here a few weeks back. "He likes a night out, and then he likes his hair of the dog the day after."

Iron skillet found, Luke sets it on his stove and goes looking for some cooking oil. Bo leaves him to it and decides to make the coffee. Some tacit plan between the Duke boys to keep the questionably sober Bo away from open flames.

"Itchy don't sound too smart to me." No, Luke wouldn't be too impressed by Itchy. Anybody who'd drink heavily and bring Bo along with him – just like Luke used to do when he got back from the Marines – would have to be a fool.

Bo shrugs, scoops coffee grounds into a filter and sets it in the top of the pot. Not the way Jesse brews it back in Hazzard, but it'll be ready in about half the time. "He ain't, but he's a good enough guy. Fastest feuler in the business."

Luke's poking a spatula around in the skillet, shuffling sausages from here to there. It's the least coordinated thing he's ever seen his cousin do.

"Since when do you cook?" It takes a good bit of effort not to laugh at how awkward those too-big hands look trying to handle kitchen tools with any grace.

The kitchen, such as it is, is too small for two Duke boys anyway, so Bo takes the half step over to Luke and elbows him out of the way to claim control over the frying pan.

He gets a dirty look, either for his behavior or his question. Or maybe just because he exists. Luke leans one hip against the far side of the kitchen cabinets and crosses his arms over his chest. Stares at nothing and just plain looks mean.

"Since Daisy left," he answers like an accusation. Like Bo ought to know or at least have thought about it. Imagined Luke behind a stove, but he hadn't and he still can't, even if he's just seen it. "I don't cook, Jesse does that. But I heat up leftovers and such on days when we been working hard and he's too tired to cook." Oh, it's all in there, the blame, the anger, the martyr that Luke imagines himself to be. The one who had to stay behind and take care of the family and homestead while Bo got to run off to NASCAR and have fun.

It isn't that simple, and it never has been, but the coffee's not quite done and his greasy breakfast will take a few more minutes to cook before it can go to work performing miracles on his hangover. He bites his tongue because whatever this fight is that Luke's spoiling for, Bo's not ready to manage his half yet.

* * *

It's Jesse's fault. It's the first thing that comes into his mind, even if it would be ridiculously childish to say out loud. But it is, at least in part, Jesse's fault.

There are things the old man doesn't understand. Things he could never in his life guess at and that's for the best, but it can make everything else problematic. Like the way he's been after Luke, trying to fix what he reckons is broken and treating all the wrong symptoms. Or maybe they're the right symptoms, but the cause is all wrong.

Bo's eaten what must for pass for breakfast now that he's on his own, and done some manner of cleaning up in his little bathroom. He's no more dressed than he was but his hair's been combed and it's easy to see that boyish face that's been plastered on the cardboard casing for matchbox cars sold all across the country. Even after an ugly night that obviously went on well into the morning, his cousin is decidedly pretty.

And has gotten around to asking questions. Or the one question that has Luke wanting to blame Jesse.

 _Go see Bo_ has been a nagging refrain over the past couple of weeks _. I don't know what has gotten into you two fools, but I reckon that if there's anyone can talk some sense into you, it's him._

Yep, there are things the old man doesn't know.

"So, it ain't that I ain't glad to see you, but what are you doing here?" And that's the question Bo keeps finding new ways of asking that Luke can't answer because blaming Jesse would be childish. Even if it's true.

 _Why, you two boys used to be thick as thieves. Now I practically got to beg you to go up and see him._ And then go behind Luke's back to get him a signed pass from good old J.D. Hogg to be out of state. Which must have cost the oldster something – at least some amount of his pride if nothing else – to get. _I don't know why you's being so mule-headed about seeing each other. I know you ain't jealous of his NASCAR career._

No, he's not, and they've been over this ground more than a few times. He sent Bo here, he knows it's his own doing that Bo's on the circuit. He's never spent a moment in envy of Bo's growing fame or the trophies he knows Bo has won. (And that, for some reason, he does not seem to have on display in his apartment. Odd, Bo used to love to place whatever he'd won, from a blue ribbon to that stupid pewter pig that was the prize for the Hazzard Derby last time they entered, proudly on the mantelpiece for everyone to admire.)

 _I ain't jealous._ But he'd had to affirm it again anyway. Because Jesse's about as diligent as a fox after the scent of hens.

_Well then, there ain't no reason you can't go see him. I don't know what on earth happened between you two boys, but I want you to go up there now, and settle it once and for all._

Yes, sir.

He's been standing in the middle of Bo's living room, because it hardly has any corners. No place to lean in an apartment that's wide open. His arms have been across his chest because there's no other safe place for them. And Bo's sitting on the edge of his own couch, looking too big and clumsy for his own home, and asking questions That Luke doesn't know how to answer.

"I had to break up with Hannah." It's a dumb thing to say, but no dumber than any of his other options.

"I'm… sorry?" Bo says, his eyes watching how Luke's weight shifts, just one foot to the other and nothing more. "Luke, I ain't—"

"I couldn't faithful to her," he interrupts, because he doesn't want to know what else Bo isn't. (Along with not being sorry, because he's not. He's over there calculating what this means to him, only Bo hasn't ever been nimble when it comes to this sort of thing. He's got that sort of slack-jawed look to him, just waiting for the next words. The explanation for it all. Well, Luke can oblige.) "Not when you can't be trusted to keep your mouth to yourself."

Bo laughs, but there's no humor in it. "Seems to me," he says, and gets lazily to his feet. "That I wasn't the only one whose mouth was where it wasn't supposed to be. Seems to me you didn't put a stop to it, neither." No more laughing, he's got that set to his face like he's trying to be hard and closed. It never works like he thinks it will, not when the corners of his lips turn down, the lower one quibbling just a bit.

"Damn it, Bo," he growls back. Not even convincing; he's angry, sure, but it's three years worth of slowly building anger inside of him. Not the sudden anger of a thirty-second argument. Shouldn't be loud yet and still there he is, getting ready to make some noise. "There wouldn't have been no need to stop nothing if you'd just kept your distance. Hell, there wasn't no reason you had to be there at all that day. Me and Daisy could have handled everything just fine."

Bo's chin's up, his eyes squint down. Still doesn't hide the hurt, but he's warming to resentment. "Sure, you could have, of course you could have. Big, tough Luke to the rescue again, taking care of his family like a nice boy should. Such a good man, that Luke Duke, you can really count on him." Bo takes a step forward, face getting pink and eyebrows low. Pointlessly stooping, as though Luke's that much shorter than him and it takes so much effort to keep them eye-to-eye. "The one who stayed behind to take care of his family while his baby cousin ran off to NASCAR without giving his family a second thought, right Luke? The one who found himself a nice, plain, boring girl to marry so he could have nice, plain boring kids—"

"Shut up, Bo." There, now that anger is real. Beyond that point where he remembers that there are words they have always been forbidden to say to each other. "You just leave Hannah out of this. Ain't none of this her fault." Quiet and menacing, when this wasn't supposed to go that way.

Bo smiles, but it's not happy. More like victorious, more like mean and a little self-assured. "And there wasn't no one that said you had to break up with her, neither. You promised to marry her and you broke that promise over one little kiss." Funny how he's standing up to his full height now, how that accusing finger is gone from Luke's chest. Bo reckons he's made himself a fine point here and the disagreement is over. "That she never needed to know about anyway. Like she never knew about any of the others before it, and don't give me none of that _I had to tell her_ crap, Luke Duke. Because you ain't told her nothing about none of it, have you?"

This isn't how this was supposed to go, but then again, it'll do in a pinch. Every fight that he has ever had with Bo, even the ones that have gotten out of control, have all circled back to where they needed to be. Just nasty enough to permit some form of violence.

So Luke shoves him. Watches him stumble back until he crashes into the couch and knocks it against the wall with a dull thud. Thin plaster on these mass construction apartments and they've probably just put a dent into it. It's going to cost Bo some amount of whatever deposit he had to put down on the place to get it fixed, but then that's only if he ever moves out. And just maybe he plans on staying here the rest of his life. He seems to have taken to this NASCAR life well enough, with its late nights and hung-over mornings.

Bo almost falls, catches himself with a hand on the back of the couch, which groans its protest against big boys and their destructive ways, then stands there just like that. Legs splayed and barely under him, weight being held up by that hand and just staring at Luke. Hurt and angry and _staring_ , like trying to make up his mind. Still for long enough that Luke's hands come down to his sides, shame taking over and the fight gone out of him.

"Bo," he says, with some intent to apologize, but he never gets that far.

Bo, coiled up like a spring that's got to be let loose or it'll break under the pressure, comes at him.


	8. Chapter 8

Luke starts it with a shove. Damn it, a shove that's full of all the same things it ever has been. Asking for more than it seems to on the surface. Things Bo wants to give and doesn't.

But the wanting is very strong.

Then again, there are dang good reasons why he doesn't. It's mighty convenient for Luke to shove him and just know that Bo's going to react, what he's going to do and how that'll make it all Bo's fault again.

And the nerve, the absolute gall of him to come in here blaming Bo for whatever decision he made about Hannah. Like it wasn't overdue, like Hannah was anything but a lie, the very easy sort to tell and maybe he figured he ought to keep right on telling it for the rest of his life.

If he'd wanted to, but obviously he didn't. And now that he's finally done the right thing and set the poor girl free to find someone who can honestly love her, he's back to the old lies he likes to tell. About how everything that has ever happened between them is Bo's doing. His stupid, impulsive cousin who can't keep it in his pants. Except, as he recalls, the one time it came down to something more intense than hand jobs, it was Luke who wound up on top.

He doesn't want to make it easy for Luke, doesn't want to give his cousin the excuse he needs to duck away from responsibility again, but for all the things he doesn't want, there's that one thing he does want.

He wants Luke.

Damn it – okay, Luke's the more responsible Duke boy. Everyone knows it and even Bo can agree that it's true. He takes his time and thinks things through, he's careful and methodical and then again, just about every bit of real trouble that Bo has ever found in his whole life has been because Luke led him right up to it.

Not, of course, that it matters, because there hasn't ever been anywhere else that he wanted to be. Luke is melancholy on a good day and out and out mean on a bad one, but he's also protective and downright gentle; being held by him is closest thing to perfect that Bo has ever felt.

"Bo," Luke says, the tension in his shoulders and jaw gone for the first time since he walked in the door. Hands down at his side, looking like defeat. Like he's ready to say he's sorry and Bo has no patience for that. Sorry now, three years later when their lives are so far from where they were supposed to be, like everything that's happened up to now can be forgotten just because someone said they were sorry and got themselves forgiven.

Hell no, Bo's not having any of that.

Pushing himself up to his full height, then two steps forward without thought, his hands slapping hard against Luke's shoulders, his arms out straight in front of him. Still moving forward far too quickly to be smart or safe, Luke trundling backward with the momentum because he has no leverage to make it stop.

The walls in his apartment are too distant from one another or Luke's standing in the wrong place. It takes far too long to cross all the open space, and they encounter the dining room table, which slides over to the side, along with a chair or two that Luke deftly kicks out of the way as they go. It's a damn good thing his cousin's got such good balance, because he's far too heavy for Bo to hold up if he starts to tip. They'd both end up on the floor rubbing at bruises instead of Bo pinning Luke to the far wall and kissing him.

Not that the kiss is a whole lot gentler than crashing to the floor would be; what Bo does is about as kind as punching Luke. Teeth clashing, lips bruised between them and his hand pulling at Luke's hair to get his head to tip back so his mouth will open. Kissing for dominance and for half a second it feels like Bo's got the battle won. Luke's slouching with his back is to the wall, his mouth open and accepting, his hands kneading at Bo's upper arms.

For a minute maybe, could be less. Then those hands on his arms are shoving, Luke standing to his full height and they're moving again. Funny thing about this open floor plan that seemed like such a good idea when he rented the place, how it makes the space too big. Too many steps to take, but they must turn at some point because Bo finds himself against the kitchen counter. The way edge catches him right about at his hip is not precisely comfortable, but it's sturdy enough to handle their weight, and far enough from that bay window that no one could see them, even if they weren't on the third floor and relatively safe from prying eyes anyway. Luke's hands, hard and hot on his face, fingers curled on his jaw and pulling him forward into the kiss. Chests together, heaving just to manage the small breaths they can pull in through their noses, his hands clawing at Luke's elbows. He turns his head enough to catch a good breath and Luke's trying to pull him back, finger caught awkwardly in his ear.

"Luke," comes out in a pant, and then it's done. The space he made for himself has closed and it's right back to kissing, less mean and more hungry now. He likes the kissing, likes even better that somehow his hands have found their way to Luke's chest, feeling each breath he pulls in, exploring the ridges of muscle and rib cage.

But he was trying to say something.

"Luke." He's taller. Tipping his head up out of the kiss and there's only so far Luke can follow before he has to give up.

"Mmm?" Not that it seems to disturb Luke or even slow him down. Bo's neck must be just as compelling to kiss as his lips.

"Luke." Hard to breathe, hard to think. "Luke," squeaks a bit at the end when those lips find that spot just under his jaw. Noisily kissing and sucking and—"Luke," he says a little more firmly and tries to pull away, but the thick fingers tangled in his hair and wrapped around the back of his head want him to stay put; the tingle in his neck from where Luke's working on him agrees. Getting free would take more strength and self-restraint that he has right now. "Remember this."

"Mmm," feels good against his skin, makes his hands get busier and their exploration of Luke's chest. Fingers searching for buttons and getting frustrated because they are resolutely snug in their holes.

Warmth of Luke's tongue against his skin; Bo's hips rock almost involuntarily forward as lips close around that spot and begin to suck. But that other thing, it was important.

"Luke," he barely gets out in something of a waver, dark hair in his mouth. "Remember this." That's what matters, more than the kissing or the thoughts he's having and the direction he needs to take this thing if it's going to end the way he wants it to. "You did this," shoved him against a counter, held him there and kissed him. "You want this as much as me."

Teeth lightly pinching the skin of his neck, Luke's fingers digging into the back of his head. Punishment for thinking when he should be kissing, for being right. Then the heat of Luke is gone, away from his neck and his face, hands off his head. A sigh of air that tickles against his skin. Warm and cool all at once.

"I did this," Luke agrees.

Bo grabs him by the back of the head and pulls him back to the kiss. The sweetness has gone right out of it, bruising and fighting over whose fault this is, tangy flavor of blood from where one of them must have split a lip.

Luke's fingers raking down his chest, exploring. Of course they are; Bo never properly got dressed which means Luke didn't have to work so hard to find skin.

They're too close and too far away all at once. Not enough room between them for him to get to Luke's chest, the buttons on his shirt, the warmth of skin underneath. His fingers try wiggling down the faded blue of his collar, but of course the shirt is buttoned up close to the top and tidily tucked in at the bottom, so there's not a lot of give. He lets his hands slide over the cloth to shoulders, feels the way the muscles there bunch with every hot stroke of Luke's hands on his own chest, feels them tighten down when he rocks his hips forward to meet up with Luke's. Gasp, and the kiss is broken.

He takes this opportunity to get his thumbs under the sides of Luke's collar and pull. Buttons pop, there's a tearing sound somewhere and he should feel bad about that, but he doesn't. Not when his hands can slide under the cloth and start to pull it back.

"Bo," Luke complains, but there's not a lot of ire in it. The shake of a dark head, and Luke's hand comes off his chest to nudge his chin up. Other hand around his back, and Luke' lips are fastened onto his neck again. Some sort of punishment for a torn shirt that's going to have to be handed over to Daisy for mending without a good explanation, and if this is how Luke sees fit to rebuke him, Bo reckons he might just try ripping his jeans next. It'll take a real feat of strength, but it might just be worth it.

For now he's still working the last of the buttons loose at the bottom of the shirt, Luke's belly curving away from the soft and nearly accidental brushes of fingers along the way. Pulling the long tail up out of jeans, a wiggle and a shift that might be helping him or just getting a better angle on his neck. He tips his head further back in case it's the latter, curls his fingers in and lets the back of his knuckles slide up Luke's breast bone. Dips and valleys and when he gets back up to shoulders, he spreads his hands wide, like he's measuring the width of Luke's chest. (Not as broad as it looks.) He shoves the shirt off Luke's shoulders until he meets the resistance of the way Luke's arms are around him. Shoves a little harder because he wants skin on skin everywhere, and gets an insistent nip on his neck for his efforts.

"Luke," he says, half in a laugh.

"What," gets mumbled into the skin of his neck between kisses that are far gentler than those that came just prior. "You been on NASCAR for three years and you ain't never had to explain a hickey before?"

See, now, they have rules about this. The girls they're not supposed to talk about because they don't want to know, and there Luke goes asking the kind of question with answers that can only lead to bad places. Fistfights and yelling, and they've only just quit that and gotten to the good part.

"Get your dang shirt off," seems more important, anyway.

A snicker that tickles against his collarbone and then Luke backs off, lets him go and starts tugging at the sleeves of his own shirt. Wasting time unbuttoning the cuffs when the seam's already torn, but that's fine. It gives Bo a chance to shrug off his own open shirt, then go after Luke's belt buckle. By the time his cousin is tidily laying his torn shirt across the counter behind him, Bo is dropping the heavy leather with the bear-claw buckle, which has been Luke's favorite since high school, onto the thick carpet at their feet with a muted thud.

"Get out of these, too," he says, pulling at the waist of Luke's jeans. Gets a cocked up eyebrow for being so bossy (or maybe for being in too much of a hurry) but after three years, he reckons he has been plenty patient. He wants what he always wanted, figures he earned, but never got a chance at before. "Bedroom's that way." Another eyebrow and a smirk to top it off; must be funny to see him this demanding and direct. Downright hilarious. "Just get in there. I'll be right behind you."

A hand grabs the back of his neck, pulls him down for a kiss that just about takes all his breath and thoughts away, one that promises everything he wants, if only he can concentrate long enough to make it there. Other hand unzips his jeans, which he never did get around to buttoning today, and palms him.

"Luke," comes out as a little mewl when it all comes to an abrupt end, allowing his cousin to take a step away from him.

A dirty laugh and Luke turns to take a few more steps toward the only closed door inside the apartment. "Bedroom's this way," he reminds Bo over his shoulder, just in case he forgot.

Ah hell, it's just like being fifteen again. Luke's hand on him, hardly doing anything at all, and already he's halfway there. Has to breathe, to slow his heart down and think far more mundane thoughts before he can even stand up straight. Baling hay and shucking corn, milking goats and finally, it's remembering Maudine's stall that does it. Cleaning up after the old girl – and suddenly Bo can find his legs, walk them into the bathroom and open the cabinet to find that lotion he uses to soften the blisters on his palms after a long race. Mirror on the inside of the door reflects his flushed face back at him, and it turns out Luke wasn't precisely kidding. Bo's got a hickey to explain. (Luke also wasn't wrong about how many times he's done it before.)

Back out of the bathroom, pain in his toe from stubbing it on the doorsill in his hurry to get where he's going. Hop and ginger step, but fortunately it's only a few more feet to get to his bedroom.

Where he finds the door open and Luke inside, still wearing pants and second thoughts in the wrinkles on his forehead.

Bo tosses the little container of cream in the general direction of the bed, doesn't bother to look to see whether it lands safely because he's already grabbing onto the thickness of Luke's forearm. Warm in his grip or maybe he just got cold in the few seconds he and Luke were apart. Firm too, a bit resistant to the way he pulls on it, then Luke stumbles toward him. His arm goes up over Luke's bare shoulders and a kiss that doesn't offer any excuses or ask permission. Just his tongue seeking out Luke's to keep it occupied, keep it interested in something other than voicing all those stupid doubts and objections that Bo can't stand to listen to even one more time.

Luke's hands find his sides, rest there. Still, unmoving, barely holding on just above his hips. Not committing, maybe getting ready to push him back and Bo reckons that's unacceptable. His own hands slide around from behind Luke's neck to his shoulders, head tipping to take the kiss to that forgetful place where even Luke becomes lax and languid. Waits for the tension to release just a little but, then gives a sudden, firm shove.

Luke doesn't so much stumble as teeter backward onto the bed, past sitting to resting on one elbow. His mouth opening to complain about the roughness and Bo follows after him. Hands shoving his pants far enough down his own hips that gravity can take over from there, and crawling onto the bed. Pushing Luke back as he comes, kicking the jeans off his feet and there it is, finally. Luke craning his neck up to find the lost kiss, arms around Bo's waist to pull him close. On top of that hard chest and belly, not exactly comfortable for him and Luke's got to be halfway crushed, but it's nice in its own way. Heavy hands warmly exploring his back, lips and tongue, little puffs of breath from Luke's nose brushing lightly on his cheek, the smell of Luke and Hazzard and home. Bo's eyes close and the two of them could be back on the farm, lying in the soft grass by their pond.

Just kissing like that, weight on his elbows with coarse curls caught around his fingers, Luke's nails tickling as they rake lightly down his back, leaving behind streaks of heat. It's all very nice, but when he rocks forward, their hips line up wrong. And Luke's still wearing his damn pants.

"I thought," he backs out of the kiss to say, "I told you to get these off."

Eyes, so blue. So intense as they stare at him, on the edge of anger. Something mean and ugly is about to get said back to him, probably about how Luke's not a girl (Bo knows that) and he can't be ordered around like that (neither can girls, but Luke never quite seemed to learn that, which is why he used to get slapped every now and then).

Bo wraps an arm around Luke's shoulders, rolls them over. Mumbles an 'ow' when the square edge of the lotion bottle pokes into the small of his back – it's good to know where that is even if he might not have preferred to find it in exactly that way – but it works out all right. Luke comes with the momentum though he's certainly strong enough to resist it if he wants to, and takes the top position. Kisses back when Bo cranes his neck up to reach him, settles where he is and forgets that he was about to be mad.

It's kind of nice like this. Can't stay this way, of course, but for now, it's good not to have to hold up his own weight, to have hands free to wander. Up through the wiry hairs sprinkled about Luke's chest and back down his sides, so oddly straight and firm, not like any girl's. Up his back and he can feel the way the muscles move when Luke's hand grabs his chin and pushes it up. The hickey, it seems, is still an art work in progress; Luke needs to add a few more flourishes.

Which works out okay, mostly. Luke's busy enough that Bo can let his hands linger around the waist of the thick jeans that rub roughly against some of his more sensitive parts. Belt loops and button, but it's hard to concentrate around the squirming of his own body in reaction to Luke's tongue on his neck. He lets out a little hum when it gets to feeling really good, gets a murmur of appreciation or amusement in return. Closes his eyes and lets his thoughts go, everything is just feeling, and frankly, it all feels pretty damned good.

Except for the scrape of those jeans on the insides of his thighs and the tender surrounds. That brings him back, reminds him that there are better ways to feel and more exciting things to do. He opens Luke's pants, button and zipper, then gets a hand inside. Stroking through his shorts before the fool can get around to having second thoughts or make up his mind that he's being treated like a girl. Moan that Luke probably never meant to let out, then heavy panting against the wetness where he had been working at his neck. Just about getting breathless when Bo stops, pulls his hand back and grips Luke's hip, shoving the shorts our of the way. Mumble that makes it clear that his ministrations are missed, and that's when he cants his hips up. Skin against desperate skin, hot and almost tingling with want.

Luke finally settles back and away from him (cold wash of air where he used to be, even if it's midafternoon on a plenty warm September day and Bo hasn't opened a single window to cool it off) and starts shoving his jeans all the way off. Has to stand up to manage the job, denim and then those thin cotton shorts. Bo fishes around for the lotion, makes a face when he realizes for the first time in all the years that he's been using it on his hands that the bottle's not so much beige as pink, and opens it. Sits up, pours out a little into his palm, letting it warm there as he watches Luke do a little dance to kick off his boots and shove the jeans after.

Luke looks at him, caught up in what comes next, how they're going to do this, and Bo banishes any notion the fool might have of doing this the same way they did three years ago. He wraps his hand around himself, spreading the lotion thickly.

A sigh, and Luke nods his head. Resigning himself to his fate because there's such a thing as fairness and honor between them. He crawls back onto the bed, right up to Bo and kisses him like that, on all fours. Rough again, in that same tone that this thing started, but not mean. His heartbeat so heavy Bo can feel it where his thumb rests across the pulse on Luke's neck, fast like he's been running from danger. (And maybe in his own way, he has.) Nervous, so odd to realize that Luke would ever feel this way, but then again, he reckons he knows a little about being on that side of this thing.

For once, Bo doesn't match him for the roughness. He keeps his own lips soft and forgiving, easy and slow and gentle. Pulls Luke down with him and settles on his side so they can be even for now. Kissing and petting until Luke wraps a leg around him and for the first time since Bo bought this bed and had it hauled up the three flights into this room, it doesn't feel too big. Just warm and cozy and he could spend the rest of his life here, just like this.

Or not. If things get too comfortable and easy, Luke will start thinking again and that can only lead to bad places. Bo shoves against him, has to try twice to get that reluctant leg to loosen up enough for him to take his position on top.

"It only hurts at first," he whispers as he pulls Luke's legs up again, hooking first one then the other around his waist. Slipping on the sweat they've built up between them, but Luke's nothing if not athletic and strong. He'll figure out how to keep them where they need to be.

But first he's got to roll his eyes at Bo. Because he never asked, because he's not worried at all. Not Luke Duke, who can face down a loaded gun without flinching.

He rocks forward for a kiss first – they're not going to be able to do that in a minute here, and besides, if he's that close he won't have to look at the faces his cousin is pulling. Then he settles back on his knees, gives Luke a second to readjust the set of his legs and pushes forward, one hand guiding. Tight, tight – almost to the point of pain and hot. Luke's hands grabbing onto his upper arms like vice grips with enough strength to break blood vessels (or even bones).

"Relax, Luke," he gasps out, taking his life in his hands. (But it's kind of a fifty-fifty proposition – Luke might as easily kill him for pushing forward before he's had a chance to get the feel and loosen what he's currently clenching as for telling him what to do.) "It—" But talking in a fool's errand. Hard to do while he's poised with so much of his weight forward, but he lifts one of his hands from the way it's been fisting into the mattress and runs it along Luke's side. Petting him like a jumpy mare, which under different circumstances would either get him laughed at or smacked. For now, Luke's too busy sucking in a slow and careful breath then nodding his head. (Ready for more.)

It takes far longer than he ever thought he could tolerate for Luke to settle down enough to let him to move. And then even more time gets lost to him figuring out how fast to go and how hard, which way works for Luke and for him, both. Luke's legs clenched around him and pulling, setting a pace that's faster than he wants, but he's in no position to argue. Goes with the motion as builds, arcs, crests and lets out a little whimper when it's done too soon. Takes Luke in hand because he didn't before and should have, listens to the groan that Luke lets out and then the arms are around him far too tight to resist. The last thing he remembers is collapsing onto Luke's chest with his cousin holding on like he'll never let him go.

* * *

Logy, muzzy, confused and then not. Must've fallen asleep when he had no intention to do anything of the sort. But there'd been that vulnerable little cry of Bo's at the end and he never has been able to do anything but hold on after that. Wrap his arms around him and feel the heartbeat thunder and race and finally slow down and settle. After that Bo moved just enough to take half his weight off Luke, looked up at him through the fringe of those too-long, wet and wild bangs and smiled. Then closed his eyes and fell asleep like that, halfway spread out across Luke, still grinning.

Luke promised himself he'd keep watch, just like he used to do at the still sites when Bo was hardly more than a boy and couldn't manage to stay up through a whole night of cooking, but he must be out of practice. He fell asleep too.

Hard to tell, through the narrow blinds across the pair of windows in this room (unopened of course, because Bo planned on sleeping all day even before the sex happened) just how much time has passed, where the sun is (other than still up) and whether it's late enough to be dinner time.

Not that the time matters, precisely. Lying here with Bo's sweat dried into his skin, he knows that the only thing that's important is that he's a fool. An absolute idiot because – okay, it's not exactly his fault that he came up here in the first place; Uncle Jesse would have tanned his hide or died trying if he hadn't. But through the whole drive along winding roads and interstates, he could feel himself building to something inside. He told himself it was righteous anger over Hannah's broken heart, but it wasn't ever that. It was the knowledge that given an opening, he was going to shove Bo and then start to silently pray that Bo would shove him right back.

So his prayers came true, but it's no good because nothing else has changed. Bo would still choose NASCAR over him, when being with him means telling Jesse. (And it does; it has to. The man sacrificed whatever his own life would have been just to stop in his tracks and raise his brothers' sons. Not only that, but to raise them right, to make them into good and honest boys.) And Luke's still going to have to go back home and try to live the wholesome life that all of Hazzard wants him to.

He's not even trying to get up yet, just figuring out how. Lifting his head to see where Bo ends and he begins when a mumbled complaint comes from his shoulder, where Bo's head is resting.

"Don't leave me," he says, high toned and needy.

_("I don't want to leave you." It was nasal and raspy all at once, like the words were too big, said too much and tore at Bo's throat on the way out. In that moment, Luke believed it. Or wanted to, wanted to think that staying here and staying together was more important to Bo than his fear of telling Jesse or his dreams of driving NASCAR._

_His twin bed creaked under them when he wrapped an arm around Bo. Too small for a pair of grown boys but just try telling that to the colossus wrapped around him. Snuffling into his shoulder and Luke kissed his forehead. Held on as much to keep Bo safely on the bed as to comfort him, kissed him entirely because he wanted to. Because he wanted Bo to choose him over a life on the road, over fast cars and easy girls, over the fear of an angry uncle. He didn't want to force it or push Bo in any one direction but he wanted him to know. That if he stayed here, no matter what else happened, he would be well loved._

" _Don't make me go," still in that same heated little voice, but that one annoyed him. No one was making Bo do anything, just providing him with options. Choices, doors to go through that no Duke before him had ever had. He didn't want to tell Jesse about them, so Luke had created an alternative for him. Their parents, grandparents and on down the line had lived their entire lives here, on this same hundred acres, plowing and tilling and watering, then at the stills, cooking. None of them doing anything but surviving and passing on their genes to the next generation, but then none of them had been like Bo. None of them had that much talent and the chance to use it._

_The walls were only so thick in this old farmhouse that every Duke had lived in before them. It was enough of a risk to be squeezed into the same tiny bed, holding each other and kissing, the bedsprings complaining. Talking was going to get overheard, might bring their uncle or cousin banging on their door or just plain walking right on in and telling them to hush. Safety would mean sending Bo back to his own bed, but Luke wasn't ready to give up where he was and the way Bo had wrapped himself around him, so he just tightened his arm around Bo and patted his back. Kept silent and after what seemed like far too long, Bo finally gave up and slept._

_Luke didn't so much sleep as snooze and even that much was more than he meant to do. Startled himself to full consciousness to find the room that soupy pool of shadows that came just before the sun started to crest the horizon. Too hot body against his side and he knew he had to move, to get out to the chores so no one would come looking for him and find him snuggled up under the covers with Bo. Kissed that pretty face, still streaked with last night's tears, and slid out from his grip. Bo curled into the warmth of where Luke had been without coming to full consciousness._

_He told himself it was a good choice, that getting out to do the chores and leaving Bo behind would give the boy privacy. A chance to think, to make the right decision for himself._

_Jesse came out to the barn a few minutes behind, fussing back at the fussy chickens and grumbling about his old-man bones. Raised an eyebrow at Luke doing the chores alone, but took out whatever his feelings were on the matter by scolding the goats and promising Maudine some oats for tomorrow. Looked at Luke for far too long, like he was watching his hair grow longer (or his temper shorten) as he got the last of Bonnie Mae's milk into the bucket, grabbed the handle and stepped out of the goat pen to head inside._

_A big hand on his arm to stay him, rough callouses catching in the fraying cotton of yesterday's shirt._

" _You all right, boy?"_

_Fine, he was just fine. Bo was inside making a decision that everyone else thought he'd already made, his packed bags sitting by the back door. Meanwhile Luke was out here following routine because what else was he going to do? Whatever Bo decided, there were chores to be done whether Luke did them alone or with Bo by his side._

_He didn't bother to answer._

" _You could go too, if you wanted. We'd find a way, Daisy and me, to get by. If you wanted to, that is."_

" _It's Bo's dream," Luke ground out, hoped it sounded less upset to Jesse's ear than it did to his own. "He's the one with the offer."_

_He got one of those sage nods that questioned how a whippersnapper like him could really think he knew anything at all. The truth was, Jesse was the one with only half the knowledge this time, and he really ought to have been grateful for what he'd been spared._

" _You sure you don't want to go?"_

_No, he didn't want to go. Had once, he could admit that, but it was nothing more than a pipe dream. Like that phase of wanting to be a professional baseball player he'd gone through when he was about ten, until he met up with Bubba Anderson of the Choctaw Chiefs and discovered that he couldn't hit off a lefty pitcher and wasn't half the fielder he thought he was. Figured out there were better things to do with his whole life than to spend it playing a game and by then Aunt Lavinia had been dying anyway. He'd been needed at home instead of out on the baseball diamond, and he'd learned responsibility to family and home. Didn't stop him from wanting greatness but it did keep him from being a fool and chasing after what he wasn't meant to have._

" _I'm sure; I thought it through," he asserted. Tried to lead this little parade out of the stink of the barn and back toward the house, where Bo was supposed to be doing some heavy thinking of his own. Hand gone from his arm to planting itself in the middle of his chest, arthritic and pale against the pattern of his shirt._

" _As long as you're sure your brain's working." A funny little twist to the wiry hairs in the old man's beard; he was getting smirked at. "Though I reckon it might do with a few more minutes to wake up." And mocked, teased when he'd always hated to be teased, even on a good day. On a day when he knew by nightfall that Bo would still be by his side, on a day very different from today. "Go on back in there and milk Sadie," right, the other goat, the one that they'd had since before Luke even went off to the service. The one he'd milked probably a thousand mornings before this one. "I'll take the eggs in."_

_Which kept him from the house and Bo just that much longer and by the time he got inside, his family was sitting down to eat. Red eyes all around, but everyone was being real brave and telling Bo how proud they were. What a great experience it was going to be, and Bo looked across the table at him. Offered up a watery smile that might just have had Luke's heart jumping in foolish hope, but then there were his eyes. Excited, in spite of everything._

_So. Bo was going to go after all._

_Wasn't long after that they all found themselves on the porch. Luke offered a handshake because that was what you gave a man who was your cousin and was going off to live his new life. Daisy stood on her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck, snuffling into the collar of that red shirt that Bo only wore on special occasions. Jesse told him all those things about love and home and that he could always come back (but he couldn't, Luke figured – he'd chosen what he wanted and he couldn't take that back) whenever he got through following his dreams. Then there was that speck that always managed to get in Jesse's eyes at the worst moments, and Daisy going to help him take care of it._

_Luke stayed outside and watched Bo climb through the window of the car they'd built together, sliding in over metal worn smooth by years of that same practiced move, waving and the roar of the engine. Then he was gone and Luke walked off for the tree line because he figured he ought to check on the fields or something. Make sure they were still empty, wouldn't want someone else planting on their recently-harvested land, not when Luke was likely to be the sole inheritor of the property some day. Spent the day doing his due diligence and walking the perimeter of the property until he looked up and wondered when the sun had become the moon. Hungry, though he hadn't realized it before, and no place else to go so he went back to the farm house. Got a shaken head from Jesse and an old finger pointing to the oven where his dinner had been kept warm. A stern look that scolded him about missed chores, but no lecture. Just silence for him to stew in._ You made your decision _, his uncle didn't have to say out loud._ Now live with it.

_Routine pulled him back into its arms like a nurturing mother. Kept him moving through his days, doing twice the work because it was just him and Jesse now, and the oldster wasn't as strong as he used to be. Kept him tired enough to sleep at night and otherwise the time just passed. He got used to the stillness and quiet around him._

_The leaves were gone, the air was cold and he hardly noticed. Put on a jacket when Daisy handed it to him on his way out the door, but otherwise paid little attention to his kin or the weather. Went about his routine, then set to fixing things that had too long gone broken. Patched the barn roof and replaced the rotted fence posts, baled the straw that he and Bo had always let lie in the years before. Cleared the leaves out from the crawl space under the porch, got hollered at for deciding to paint the kitchen one afternoon when Jesse was out playing checkers and Daisy was wherever she'd been going off to lately. The old man came home to a house that stunk and had one freshly painted wall amongst three others that were as ragged and dirty as they'd ever been, wrinkled up his nose and told Luke that if he didn't go out and race around the countryside or get himself arrested by Rosco soon, he was going to get whipped. Then the two of them set to finishing the project at hand._

_After that, Jesse took to handing him the keys to the pickup from time to time and telling him to get lost. He never went far or fast, usually found himself up at the old Indian caves, watching the sun and listening to the stream trickle by._

_For a few days he went off on a hunt. Came back with venison and turkey and Jesse praised his kills but Luke figured it wasn't such a big deal. Hunting was easier when you did it without a blond behemoth loudly cracking bad jokes (and then laughing at them) by your side. He went back to fixing and mending and changing the oil on the pickup and the jeep whether they needed it or not and then one day Daisy came home and she wasn't alone. Some skinny fool by her side, shifty-eyed and greasy under his tidy brown suit, and she called him L.D. Looked at him like she figured he was a prince in disguise and didn't notice the way he slouched and how his hair stuck out at the sides like he'd tried to get it to lay down and it just wouldn't. Didn't see the scars on his shoes or the too-worn belt, but she would, in time. She always saw through the fools that showed up in Hazzard wanting her in all the wrong ways. Eventually, anyway._

_But first there was tilling the fields and spring planting, then there was irrigation and watering until he found another hole in the barn roof that needed repairing and before he could get around to looking at the gate to Maudine's stall that had a habit of unlatching itself, Daisy was announcing her engagement._

_It was Bo's fault. Daisy's too, but mostly Bo's. For not being here to do his half of the farm work and his half of watching over Daisy and proving that no man was good enough for her. Luke got started too late in chasing L.D. off and then got told to tend to his own business by Jesse and that was Bo's fault, too. It would have been even sides if his cousin had been here, him and Bo against Jesse and Daisy. As it stood he was outnumbered and a wedding got planned no matter how stupid it was to let Daisy marry this man._

_Bo was invited to the wedding, of course he was. He was as much a cousin to the bride as Luke was and maybe neither of them wanted to attend, but they were obligated._

_The rules started then, because he didn't want to know. Didn't want to hear about the life of a NASCAR driver on the road where the nights were long and the groupie-girls' skirts were short. Bo wasn't winning every single race like he had here in Hazzard, but he was still beautiful and blonde and he surely had them lining up to spend a little bit of close time with him.)_

"Bo," he mutters. It's supposed to be an explanation of how he has to go and the sort of idiots they are to have let this happen again, but his lip gets caught on the way and his tongue is too busy to talk anyway. A kiss and there's no point in pretending anything at all. It's his doing, has to be him that started it because Bo's still half asleep. Waking up now, his brain getting the message that his body already knew. One leg wrapped tightly around both of Luke's, pulling him to where he's wanted. Just the slightest rock between them like ripples in a pond, like little teases of what Bo wants, what he wants. What their bodies want.

Fingers in his hair, tangling in and out, kisses growing shorter as Bo gets more awake. Smell of sweat and whatever soap Bo uses, leftover taste of spicy sausage in the kisses, fingers warm and smooth, traveling from the back of his head to his cheek, his jaw, and Bo's turning him to the side to kiss over toward his ear. Tickle of unshaven whiskers against sensitive skin and he has to pull away from it.

"Stay," Bo whispers, not whining, but far too serious. Almost sad. "I ain't ready for you to go. I want you to—"

A kiss to hush him up, but the sentence goes on in Luke's head anyway. About what Bo wants and how there's no point in denying him. They're already naked and wrapped around each other on a bed. The room is quiet and safe, dim, and no one that matters will ever find them here. He gets up on one elbow, Bo's arm wrapped around his shoulder to keep him close and hold onto the kiss. Takes far more effort than it should for him to find a place on top, both his legs between Bo's skinny ones, hot skin of their bellies rubbing together as the kiss deepens like a sigh between them. Acknowledgement of what's to come and how it will be as Bo releases the tight hold on his shoulders now that he knows he won't have to work to keep Luke here. Fingers drifting lightly down his back, not so much soft as unsure. Nervous.

"It'll be okay," Luke mumbles before he can think about it. What he's promising, and how long that promise lasts. It's enough that Bo's fingers find their courage, their familiarity with the hollows of rises of Luke's body. That he's not afraid to touch him.

Holding his weight up on his elbows limits his movement; just lips and head as he nuzzles under Bo's chin to find that sensitive spot. But Bo's hands make up for what Luke's are not free to do, seeking and stroking, getting lost then found again. Both of their breath catching here and there as they use hands and mouths to search each other, little mewl from Bo when Luke's tongue laps around that spot it discovered earlier.

"Luke," has a totally different tone now, a different want. One that tells him with a single syllable that there's no need to tease anymore, to kiss or touch for the sake of arousal. Bo is ready, and as he always has been, impatient. _Now_ , Luke.

"Where's the—" whatever it was that Bo used. Luke never got a good look at it, just knew that it was in a tinted bottle and smelled flowery. Off-white substance, a cream of some sort, and he reckons it worked well enough. He's only sore when he shifts the wrong way (and there's plenty of shifting in his near future, he knows) and even then it's not bad. Just the physical memory of being that close to Bo.

One of those wandering hands off him and slapping around on the bed like that's going to do anything but make noise. Luke snorts despite the fact that he'd really like to know where that little bottle is instead of crouching this close to what he wants and not being able to have it. Lets his weight shift more toward his knees even if that does allow a cool wash of air to worm it's way between the two of them. Looks around, pays attention to details that Bo wouldn't bother to think about, like where the mattress is most dented, and where gravity would want to take the bottle and finds it tangled in the sheets next to Bo's backside. Kisses that pouting face that's playing at being upset that he's been snickered at, and pours a little lotion (it turns out, now that he's got a second to look at the bottle) onto his fingers. Figures it's been years and he wasn't very good at it then. Might not be any better now, but he can be gentler at least. Can make it easier on Bo.

Fingers inside, and Bo's got a funny look on his face like this isn't what he was begging for. A little movement, some re-angling and there it is, a moment of peaceful bliss across that pretty face.

"Luke," is a little more commanding even than the last time. "Come on."

Yeah, all right. He doesn't have to be asked twice. Hand free again, more lotion to spread on himself, then lifting Bo's legs up onto his upper arms, reaching under that long body and finding hips to grab onto. Reminds himself to go slow and easy, to stop whenever there's tension on Bo's face, flexed eyebrows or too much color coming into his cheeks. Waits, then pushes forward, then waits some more. Leans forward to rest his forehead on Bo's rib cage and kisses his belly because it's right there in front of him.

"Luke," Bo gasps. Sucks in a hard breath and Luke lifts his head to look at him. To make sure he's all right, not hurt or—"will you hurry up?"

Sure he will; glad to oblige. He pulls in a deep breath, sets his knees and pushes forward. Groan beneath him, but it's not pain. He can tell because of the curl at the corner of Bo's lip that thanks him for being so thoughtful.

No problem, really. Any time.


	9. Chapter 9

It's the shower that breaks the spell. Not that there's any way it could have been avoided – the spell was never particularly magical and it wasn't very strong, either. Not half as strong as Luke's need for cleanliness. He wasn't always this way, but he came back from the service all picky and tidy and Jesse had just told Bo and Daisy to be patient with him. That the military changed things in a man.

So his cousin needs to wash what they've done together off his skin. (And Bo can understand that because it was all perfectly nice when they were doing it, but afterward the sweat left their skin and hair sticky and the lotion left their more private areas slippery.) He does his own washing in the kitchen sink and figures he'll get in the shower as soon as it seems safe to. Not right away, because the spell has been broken and that means there's likely to be some backlash in his future.

Maybe not, but then he always has been a fool for hope.

Luke emerges from the bathroom with droplets running out of his hair and soaking into his shirt, tightening his belt with an edge of precise and careful violence. Like his temper's just about to break loose from whatever tenuous hold he's had on it up until now. Which is as annoying as it is predictable. Not a whole hour ago Luke had held him gently like he was afraid he might have broken him. Asked him if he was all right, kissed him when he nodded that he was. Luke loves him well enough, but he's a coward. An angry coward at that. With a tightly fastened belt, a viciously tucked shirt and a mouth opening to—

"Luke," is his attempt to cut off whatever excuses and accusations are about to be unleashed at him. "You wanted it. You can't go saying you didn't want it now."

Dirty look out from under lowered eyebrows. "What I want ain't got nothing to do with it," comes out like perfect logic and some kind of brave self-denial that might even be half believable if he and Luke hadn't just had sex. Twice. If Luke hadn't smiled afterward and run a hand through Bo's hair with the sort of affection that he's never shown any girl. "What I got to do is—"

"What you got to do," Bo sneers back at him, knows his face has gone ugly. Can feel the anger rising up into his stomach like so much moonshine, swilling and burning everything it touches. Figures it's not fair, when Luke hasn't launched into his own anger at full tilt yet, reckons he's jumping the gun, but then again, he knows how this story goes, knows that it never seems to end in _happily ever after_. "Ain't no one telling you that you got to do nothing, Luke. No one's holding you to nothing at all. Except you."

Oh, the mean look he gets for that. Bo couldn't match it if he tried. Hand on his hip, tight shoulders and jaw, dismissive twist at the corner of his mouth, heavy, low brows and those eyes looking right through him. Like he's just said the stupidest thing Luke's ever heard, and that makes him useless, worthy only of disdain. A fool to be ignored and laughed at, like Rosco P. Coltrane and his annoying sirens. Just go a little faster and leave him in the dust.

"Someone's got to take care of the farm, Bo," calls him lazy and selfish and a moron all at once. The gloves come off.

_(The rules started closing in around him like jail cell bars when Daisy got married. He came home to Hazzard, of course he did. Daisy was his cousin every bit as much as she was Luke's. And he showed up not so much to celebrate the wedding as to try to talk Daisy out of it. He didn't know L.D. and that was half the problem, as he saw it. The girl had a heart like a runaway horse, always off in some crazy direction at breakneck speed. Sure, she thought she loved L.D. now, but she'd thought she loved Neil Bishop a few years back, and then it was that guy Earl, and Gaylord was in there somewhere. Not to mention Enos, and of them all, the deputy would have been the only one Bo might have been okay with her marrying. Maybe, under the right circumstances, but that didn't matter, because Enos had run off to Los Angeles. Probably to get away from the unpredictability of Daisy's runaway horse of a heart._

_Luke wasn't necessarily jumping up and down with joy at seeing him, even if he also wasn't surprised. He was friendly enough, and they found quick common ground in the desire to talk some sense into Daisy. They failed spectacularly, in a fireworks show worthy of the town square, when Daisy stalwartly refused to consider any of their perfectly sound and reasonable arguments._

_Love, she told them, without any sense of irony or shame, was worth any risk. And furthermore, she added, what the heck did her dumb, boy cousins know about love, anyway? It was hard to argue with the woman when she was right. Even if she was near-hysterical and speaking in that range that ought to get the whole town's dogs barking. Jesse found the three of them arguing in the kitchen and told him and Luke to cool it._

_So there was no way around it. For the wedding itself, they were on their best behavior. But right before and right after, in those days when they were supposed to be coming together as a family to celebrate the blissful event, Luke was just plain surly. And bossy – he always had been and maybe Bo had been more patient with it before, but now that he'd had a few months away, it grated at him, how Luke was telling him everything from how to drive – when he was the one with the NASCAR contract – to how to wear his cummerbund and bow tie. When he could talk and when he was supposed to hold his tongue and – those things made him angry, but they were a hell of a lot easier to deal with than the rules that Luke started to make._

_Dating girls, trying to settle down and be good boys – that one was first and relatively straightforward. Bo added in the part where they wouldn't talk about girls, and Luke countered with how the two of them couldn't sleep in the same room. That one came after the wedding, after they'd slept side-by-side one last time. Once he was safely back in Mooresville, that rule turned into Bo not being able to stay at the house for more than a day unless Luke was somewhere else, which evolved into Bo never coming home. The rules got meaner after that, petty. No phone calls to each other after a race because Luke didn't want to hear him breathless and excited and wonder whether it was NASCAR or some girl that made him feel that way. No talking before a race because Bo was probably just thinking about the girl he was going to get with later. No passing messages through Daisy, who moved up to North Carolina after the wedding and lived far closer to Bo than Luke did. No talking at all unless Jesse insisted on it—_

_He almost stopped calling home after that last one. Almost, but he figured Jesse would whip him if he did. And besides, there was comfort in hearing the voice of the man that had raised him, of listening between the words and hearing the sounds of chickens clucking in the farmyard, a goat's complaint and the tractor rumbling to a start somewhere in the distance. Rosco's siren once, and he could just about smell the air, heavy with fog but electric with anticipation and Jesse had hung up on him quick that time. Some kind of shouted warning to Luke and he was gone, leaving Bo with a dial tone and a hole that went right through him and left him as hollow and fake as a chocolate Easter rabbit. Feeling like he didn't belong where he was and he couldn't go back to where he had been and where was he supposed to be when nowhere was home anymore?_

_But the oldster had called him back a few hours later and a couple of dollars poorer. Bail money to get Luke free after some kind of pointless skirmish with Boss over money missing from school funds, of all things. Luke hadn't done it, of course, and they still had to go about proving that, but they had the whole town on their side so they'd come out fine in the end, Jesse swore._

_He didn't cry. He wanted to, but if he had, he would have had to explain it to Jesse when he couldn't even halfway explain it to himself. How he didn't want to be threatened with jail every day of his life like Luke still was but – then again he did. And how it wasn't any comfort to know that the town would help Luke get out of this one because it wasn't the town's duty to protect Dukes. Dukes protected each other, and Luke shouldn't be there alone, without him and Daisy as backup._

" _Jesse," he'd mumbled instead of crying. Might have come out sounding a little bit breathy and wet, but he wasn't crying. "Maybe I should come home."_

_A low, old man's chuckle was the answer to that. "Why? Because J.D.'s got it in for Luke? Shoot, boy, that ain't nothing new. And it ain't nothing worth giving up your dream for, neither. Luke can handle himself."_

_Of course he could, Luke always had been the most calm and steady of the Duke cousins. He could look Boss in the face and call him a liar without restraint, and old J.D. would be the one flinching and backtracking. But that wasn't the point. (At least Bo didn't think it was. He was losing track of the point, really.)_

" _I know he can, Uncle Jesse. I just figure maybe he could use some help."_

" _Old Luke would be spitting mad if you left the NASCAR circuit to help him out."_

_Wasn't that the truth._

" _Then maybe we should switch places. Or take turns. I could drive this season and by next season we could get him a contract. I could come home and help you with the farm so you wouldn't have to do it alone and—" it wouldn't solve everything, but maybe it would help. If Luke could get away for a while, maybe he'd relearn fun and relaxing, maybe he wouldn't be so stiff-spined and halfway angry all the time. Maybe he'd stop being resentful or fed-up or whatever he was._

_Another laugh from the oldster, wise and knowing, but not particularly amused._

" _Boy, if Luke wanted to be out there at NASCAR, he would be." The phone was sweaty against Bo's ear. Hard plastic and he hated its unforgiving nature, how it pressed against him without any amount of concern or kindness. "I already told him that if he wanted to go, I'd find a way to get by. Jeb ain't that far away and there's always boys here in town that's looking for work. I could hire them for planting and harvest, but he wouldn't hear of it." The receiver wasn't, despite his sweat glossing it to a black shine, warm. It couldn't pat him on the face like Jesse's hand might have, if there weren't circuits and wires and more miles than he liked to think about between them. "I reckon he's where he wants to be, even if it don't make no sense to you or to me."_

_Oh, but it did. It made absolutely perfect sense right then. All the things Luke had said that he'd tried not to listen to or believe, all the meanness and spite. Luke had been offered options and chances at a different life, but he'd turned them down so he could be a martyr. So he could be the same Saint Luke he'd even been when they were kids. Bo had gotten smacked in the mouth for calling him that, but that was only because half the time, Luke couldn't face the truth. That he could only feel good about himself when he denied himself anything or anyone that might have made him happy._

_Luke had sent Bo away not for Bo's sake, but for his own. And all the same, there he was in Hazzard, feeling sorry for himself and blaming everyone around him._

" _Uncle Jesse," Bo said. "This has got to be costing you a fortune. And you need to look after Luke. I'll talk to you another time."_

_It wasn't even a game and somehow he kept losing it all the same.)_

"Saint Luke," he accuses in something like a hiss. He never has been able to sound half as sinister as he'd like to, but he's just as angry as a snake facing down the business end of a hoe. "You ain't nothing but a coward."

Luke cocks an eyebrow at him, just about daring him to go on. To give him all the glorious details of his cowardice and Bo is perfectly willing to comply.

"This," he gestures loosely around his apartment. A nice enough place if all you want to see is that bay window looking out over the lake that reflects the darkening sky. Or the hot water tank that lets him take as long a shower as he wants under a nozzle that throws twice as much water as the one in their little bathroom in Hazzard ever could. The washing machine and dryer that're stacked in the wall next to the bathroom; small enough that he has to worry about overloading them all the time, but it's easier than a washing board and a steel tub on a splintering kitchen porch. The bedroom that's big enough to accommodate his wide bed and for all that, this place is a dump. Thin walls that let in the sounds of his neighbors, sloppy paint splattered on doorknobs, streaked on the walls. One apartment stacked on top of the other with no personality, no marks from generations of kin having lived here. Bo hates this apartment as much as he did the first day he moved in here. "Is all you, Luke. Every bit of this is your doing because you ain't got the guts to face what you are."

A bark of a laugh, and Luke takes a step toward him. Hand still on his hips, but white-knuckled like he's holding on to himself with all his strength just to keep from lashing out. "And what am I?"

"A bitter fool who done everything to himself. You want to be Saint Luke," oh those pretty blue eyes squint down hard at that one. Luke still does not like that name, even if he's supposed to be too grown up to hit Bo for using it now. "You just go right ahead. But don't be pretending it's got nothing to do with Jesse or the farm. Or me or anything else but you being a coward."

"A coward," tries to come out in a laugh and totally dismiss the accusation as the silly ramblings of a silly baby cousin. Doesn't work; Bo knows those muscles in Luke's jaw, knows how they can be soft and supple to the touch when he's being kissed, how they can be ugly and angular when he's getting ready to lose that careful control that he likes to pretend he has over his temper. "For breaking up with Hannah when I couldn't be an honest man with her?"

No, that wasn't so much cowardice as a moment of clarity, probably. Luke seeing, if only for a second or two, that anyone settling down with him would be consigning themselves to the same kind of unhappiness that Luke enforces on himself.

"No," Bo informs him. "A coward for acting like this," again, a gesture around the apartment, because it stands in pretty well for all the words he doesn't have the patience to say. The way Bo's been exiled, their separate lives, the things they want and can't have except for in stolen snatches here and there when Luke decides to give himself a temporary reprieve from his misery, but that leave them both feeling far worse in the long run. "Had anything to do with Jesse. With honor and not keeping secrets, with us trying to be good boys and find nice girls to settle down with so we could pass on the family name. It ain't about that. Or about taking care of the farm."

He is, he figures, on the ragged edge of getting hit. He plants his feet just in case, shifts his weight a little so that if he goes down at least he won't hit the corner of the couch with the back of his head.

"You want to tell me what you figure it's about then?" Luke playing at being amused that Bo has any thoughts at all beyond sex and food, but he's not. That's a dangerous smirk across his face.

"It's about you blaming me for everything that ever happened. Good or bad, whether you wanted it or didn't, you always had me to blame for all of it. Your stupid little cousin that was a sinner and that was just fine with you, Luke." His face is hot, his heart is fluttering around and just about choking off his words. He figures he should stop, should take a deep breath and try this in a different, calmer, less accusatory way, but it's too late. He's already taken that step forward, his finger's jutting into Luke's chest while his head tilts just slightly to the side. His control went the way of the sweetness of the afternoon – they're both gone and there's no sign that they were ever here to begin with. "That left you to be the saint and the martyr, the one who gave up everything so his family could be happy. That worked out real good, didn't it, Luke? You got me out here, then you drove Daisy off into the arms of a man that wasn't never good enough for her, you been sour and rotten to Jesse," which he doesn't really know to be a fact, but he can pretty well assume it to be true. "In what are supposed to be the golden years of his life. All because you're scared to ever have what you really want. What you decided all by yourself, without ever asking anyone else, that you couldn't have."

Luke's mouth opens with some kind of an answer for it all, some manner of logic that will prove his point of view, and Bo doesn't want to hear it. Luke's always been stronger and quicker-thinking than him, but when it comes right down to it, Bo's got the louder voice. Or just the willingness to shout over whatever anyone else tries to say.

"And you know what, Luke, I reckon it would have been okay. It would have worked out in the end for me to be out here on the NASCAR circuit and you back home convincing yourself that you were sacrificing what you could have had for the greater good. I would have won trophies and just maybe you would have settled down and gotten married, then raised up some new Dukes to take over after you were gone. But you wasn't content to do that." His vision's washed over red, his head hurts from the echoing of his own voice. He's got no control over any part of himself now – not the finger that thumps hard against Luke's breastbone, not the words that are about to come out, not the tears that are leaking out from the corners of his eyes. "You had to keep coming back, you had to get with me and take what you wanted, then run off and blame me for it all. You ain't nothing but a lily-livered, yellow-bellied coward."

A fist to his jaw might just be a blessing right about now. An excuse to let loose and brawl and cry and just – share the way his chest hurts, his eyes and his face. A fistfight, at least, would be something they could do together.

But Luke's not going to give him the satisfaction. All the tension goes out of his shoulders and his jaw. "I can't talk to you," is all Luke says, stepping back. Grabbing the keys to the pickup from where he left them on the counter when he went off to take his shower, and walking out the door without ever looking back.

* * *

"I can't talk to you." It's plenty true enough. He can't talk to Bo, not when the brat's (right) irrational and upset and (right) just not talking sense. Or when he goes picking at Luke's emotions like that – the whole Saint Luke thing that he knows has always gotten a rise out of him, ever since they were kids, and he's just using it like a weapon now. Like some kind of a blunt force meant to provoke violence and he—

Doesn't want to do that. Doesn't want to hurt Bo that close to having kissed him, held onto him, heard him make that vulnerable little noise at the end. So he grabs the keys to the pickup and walks out the door. Closes it behind him just as gently as he can with the illogical reasoning that he doesn't want the people in the rest of the apartments in this building to come out and see what's going on. As if they could have missed the spectacle that was an all out Duke boy screaming match, as if he and Bo have any secrets in this place anymore. (At least he's not the one who has to live here.)

He doesn't much remember walking down the three sets of stairs to the parking lot, nor getting into the pickup and driving off. He's probably about a hundred miles south of Bo's before he has a single rational thought. It's a good thing he's a Duke and former moonshine runner, that he can drive on auto-pilot, because he can't swear that he's even seen a single road sign, much less actually read one.

He has crossed over into Georgia and looking for a gas station when he realizes that he's not wearing his belt. A little further along he comes to a Gulf station and pulls off the road, but he already knows what he's going to find. An empty back pocket because he left his wallet back at Bo's, too.

And in it, all folded up into eighths in a tidy square, is the pass Jesse got from Boss for him to be out of town. Which has two days left on it – he and Bo could have spent a lot more time together. If either one of them had any self-control.

Now it's going on midnight and he's almost out of gas on the wrong side of Atlanta while his wallet and the ten dollar bill he'd brought with him lie somewhere in the mess of Bo's bedroom floor up in Mooresville.

It's been a lousy day and the night isn't shaping up to be any better.


	10. Chapter 10

He can hear the footsteps outside his apartment door, then the jingling. Key sliding into the lock with an unfamiliar rattle, and by that point Bo's shoving the blanket away from his shoulders. It's not Tuesday, he'd swear it's not. There's no denying the disaster that his apartment's in and it would make perfect sense for Mathilda to be showing up, except that he's pretty darn sure that it was just yesterday that he was driving the North Wilkesboro track. Dizzying laps up and down the tight confines of its short course, and all five hundred of them were a blur. He won, but he's been winning lately and he hardly remembers crossing the finish line. Lem and Itchy had wanted to take him out afterward, but Chief Meade stood rather literally in their way. Took Bo over to where the crew chief's beloved old Ford Fairlane was parked and made him lie down on the back seat. Maybe he drifted off, though he would have sworn he didn't. Whichever way it had really gone, he had been startled to come to the sudden realization that he was being checked over by the track doctor.

He was fine, he'd said. Just tired. But the doc hadn't been too thrilled with the green tint of his skin or whatever the blood pressure cuff told him, and wanted to take Bo to the on-site medical clinic. Middle ground had been found when Lem agreed to drive him straight home and see to it that he got to bed. He'd swear that all just happened yesterday, which ought to make this Monday. That can't be Mathilda.

He's trying to untangle his feet from the blanket when his door opens with a stuttering thud, and Daisy stumbles in, her arms loaded with brown paper bags. It takes her a second to find a place to set them, what with how they're blocking most of her vision. About that time she sees him, still trying to get up off the couch.

"Oh, sugar," she says, the set of her eyebrows confused. Like she didn't expect to find him in his own house. (Or maybe like she didn't expect to find the couch set against an entirely different wall than it was last time she was here. Which he can understand, even he doesn't fully know why he rearranged all his furniture a month ago. He told himself it was all about finding any other objects Luke might have left behind, besides his wallet, knife and belt. Wanting to get it all found and sent back to Hazzard at once so he wouldn't have to worry about it later, but it wasn't that simple. After he was sure Luke was gone and never coming back, he wanted a whole different vision of the world. He couldn't change his life, but he could change where he sat when he got home. So he moved everything around to different places, even if it doesn't entirely make sense that the couch is now in a space that's more suited to dining. It's an open floor plan and who says he has to go with convention, anyway?) "I knocked, but you didn't answer. I figured you wasn't home."

Well, that explains the breaking and entering part, though she hasn't broken anything and her entry is pretty much sanctioned at any time of the day or night. It doesn't explain why he never heard her knock or why she's here at all.

"You all right?" she asks, suddenly concerned and walking right up to him. A man who has moved his furniture around and can't get himself untangled from a blanket requires close observation, obviously. Careful scrutiny and touching, too. He shrinks back from the hand that's suddenly on his forehead, but it's already too late. "You've got a fever," she accuses, like it's some sort of a life-changing secret that he's been keeping from her for years. "Bo Duke, you get to bed this minute."

A fever; that might explain how tired he feels, even though he suspects he slept through a good part of the morning already. Had to have been asleep to miss Daisy knocking on his door. If she really did – the bags she carried in here make it seem like it would have been hard for her to manage. Then again, she's a good Duke and doesn't lie so – maybe he really does have a fever. He can't quite make sense of his thoughts.

But when it comes right down to it, he hasn't really been making much sense of anything for the past month. Not since Luke walked out of here and Bo knew things he'd never known before, even if he's been long gone from Hazzard. Like what it means to lose Luke, to really lose him forever and not just for now. After Luke had left that night, Bo had held on to his righteous anger for a few minutes. He hadn't, after all, said one false word and more than that he had let Luke get away with blaming him for far too long. It was about time he—

But that kind of thinking only got him as far as his own bedroom. To get dressed, to make the bed – he doesn't rightly know now what his plans were when he went in there, only that once he got there, he saw Luke's belt. Remembered it like the heat of Luke against him, inside him. All those things that they'd been together and done together, all the better parts of Luke. Who his cousin was once you got past all those nearly insurmountable roadblocks he put up everywhere and what did it matter now? Luke was gone.

After that he saw the wallet, the knife in its little pouch. Remembered what it was like to always have one hooked to his belt, to pay attention each morning to making sure it was secure and with him because you never did know what a Hazzard day might bring and what tools you might need. Sat down on the edge of his unmade bed and thought about those days of hunting, or being hunted.

The wallet, though. Luke would have to come back for that. The belt and knife were less important, could be done without for a while, but Luke would need his wallet. Which didn't have a lot inside, just his driver's license with the split in the lamination and the crack across the faded photo where it had gotten wet on more than one unexpected dip into a Hazzard body of water, a ten dollar bill and the tightly folded pass from Boss Hogg that allowed him out of the county in the first place. He'd need that if he got stopped anywhere between here and home, heck, he'd need his driver's license, too. Bo had carefully pulled the pass open, flattening the creases against his jeans. Smirked a little at Boss's signature with all its curves and loops; he must have gone back to practicing his handwriting again, just in case he was ever called upon to sign a historical document that would be preserved and framed in Washington, DC. Looked at how Luke's name was jotted in a half-hearted scribble, and that was how Boss really wrote. The date and Luke's destination, allowing him into Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina only, until the fourth of September. Which he'd suddenly realized, was still two days away and it gave him thoughts. Hopes.

About how, when Luke came back for his wallet, Bo would apologize. And _mean it_ , like Jesse always used to say. He'd mean it in all the ways he'd never bothered to mean it before when there was an uncle there to make sure they stayed together even if they were mad at each other – when he'd had the luxury of taking Luke for granted. After he'd gotten his apology accepted, he'd ask Luke to stay. He'd give up his bed and stay on the couch, he'd show Luke around the gym tomorrow. Introduce him to Itchy, Don, Lem and Butch. Maybe Chief, if he was around. He'd get permission for Luke to drive around the track a few times and all the while they'd just be cousins. Whatever it took, because having Luke in his life was the most important thing.

He took the wallet, belt and knife out of the bedroom and laid them on the kitchen counter. Stood around for a few minutes just waiting for that knock on his door. Quiet and controlled or angry pounding, he wasn't sure which to expect but he'd handle it either way. He'd start right up with how sorry he was and he wouldn't let Luke leave or turn it back into an argument.

Stood there a while longer, just staring out his bay windows at the moon climbing up over the lake. His stomach grumbled and he realized he hadn't eaten anything since those greasy sausages so many hours ago. Had to have been even longer since Luke last ate; he'd be hungry when he got back. Bo opened his refrigerator and dug around for what he could make. Didn't have much other than cold cuts and cheese, some lettuce that didn't look too wilted, bread. Mustard in the back and ketchup in the cabinet. He made himself a big old sandwich, then a second one for Luke. Feeding him would keep him here long enough to listen, Bo figured. To hear all of how sorry Bo was for tearing into him like that, for using all those secrets he knew about Luke to hurt him.

He started messing with the furniture right then. Figured if he was going to sleep on the couch he'd better move it away from the bay window, where a glaring parking lot light shone, day and night. Which meant the pitiful excuse for a dining room table had to move too, and he didn't do a whole lot at first. His stomach kept after him with how it had been neglected so he ate one of the sandwiches. Promised himself he'd make another when Luke got back, so his cousin wouldn't have to eat alone.

The living and dining areas were in total disarray, but Bo decided the bedroom had to be dealt with first. Had to change the sheets on the bed, because Luke couldn't sleep in the mess that they'd made of them. Fresh ones on the shelf in the bathroom and the dirty ones got shoved into his closet. They couldn't stay there, but for now that would at least get them out of Luke's way. And his cousin should be here any minute now.

Once the bed was fit to be slept in, he headed back to the kitchen. Washed some plates that had sat in the sink until they were crusted over in various shades of red and brown. Usually he left that kind of work for Mathilda, because she was so much better at it than he was, and she even claimed to like doing it. Smiled at him when he said no one liked doing dishes, told him to just hush and let her worry about it. But she wouldn't be in for almost a whole week and with Luke here he'd need twice as many plates. He went after the frying pan next, but deemed it impossible for now and left it to soak.

The bathroom wasn't too messy, he had always been pretty careful about that. It was too small to begin with and if any clutter gathered in there at all he would find himself bumping his elbows or his knees against walls in whatever attempts he made to avoid it. Still, if Luke was going to stay a couple of days he really ought to—

And then he caught sight of himself in the mirror. His hair in tight curls because he hadn't washed it since it got sweat soaked and mussed in the bed with Luke. His shirt was barely on his shoulders, he'd never buttoned it or maybe he had and it came undone when he started shoving the furniture around. He had a red mark on his neck that was going to purple to a full out hickey by morning, and another on his face that he had no idea when or where he'd gotten. Wasn't important, it wouldn't stay long, but there were his eyes. Kind of big and dark and red around the edges. His nose was running and he realized right about then that he had a headache. Not the kind that an aspirin would help, more the kind that might go away when he stopped crying. Which was strange, because he didn't remember starting.

It was after midnight by the time he stumbled out of his bathroom, tripped on the corner of the couch he'd left askew and in his own way. Hopped and whined about his toe which had developed a painful heartbeat all its own, made his way to the door to the outside. Considered going through it, but there wasn't any point. Luke wasn't coming back, not even to get his wallet. Not to get the pass that proved he was allowed to be anywhere but Hazzard; he'd rather risk a night in jail than come back to see Bo even one more time.

He'd locked the door instead of going out of it, looked at the sandwich on the counter and figured he'd deal with it later. Or never, maybe he'd leave it there to dry out and turn colors as some sort of a monument to his own stupid temper. A reminder of what happened when you let your mouth get ahead of your brain (or your hopes get ahead of your logic). Picked his way carefully through the living-dining area that was rife with landmines now, made it back to the bedroom. Laid down and wished he hadn't changed the sheets. So his nose could be full of the smell of Luke instead of laundry detergent, but there was no point in fooling himself. Luke was gone, forever and irrevocably.

The headache had been gone by the next morning, but he's been walking in a fog ever since. Going through motions and letting himself be guided through his days by Butch and Lem. At least until he gets into the car and then it's Chief Meade through the tiny speaker in his crash helmet, telling him what to do and keeping him in line.

He's been winning races, got a streak of three wins going now. Not that it matters when he can hardly remember the feeling afterward, once the cameras and lights get turned off and the cheering stops. He lets Lem and Itchy take him out then, which is really generous of them both. Itchy doesn't earn the half of what Bo does, and if Bo's winning, Lem's losing, because he's the other driver that gets to race for the Reed team.

But he didn't go out last night so he's got no excuse for how tired he is today. With no explanation to give Daisy, he just accepts hers. Apparently he's sick. Doesn't feel a whole lot different from being sad, except for the way he can't manage to stay awake.

"Get in bed, Bo." Daisy in full out mothering mode.

The couch is so mch closer and he still has his blanket half tangled around him. He makes to go back there and gets swatted on his arm.

"Bed, Bo."

He whines something that's not quite words. Which is all the better because all he can think is that the bedroom's a mess and he hasn't ever changed the sheets again since a month ago. He still sleeps in there most nights but more and more he finds himself out here where the walls are different and the couch doesn't swallow him whole and leave him feeling empty.

Pointy little finger pokes him in the shoulder, as if there's enough force behind a poke to make him do what she wants. Then again, there's a pretty dangerous look on her face warning him that if he doesn't do what she wants, she's going to make him drink cod liver oil or whatever other nasty concoction she can come up with on short notice. He goes.

Not that it slows her down one bit in her poking or her scolding. Telling him to get in there, mister and not to argue. And all the way under those covers, mister. Where's his quilt, doesn't he have proper bedclothes? Apparently the blanket that he dragged in with him from the couch isn't good enough, even if he does lay it over top of his sheets. He points her toward his closet and gets called mister a few more times because somehow she figures that'll make him behave.

"Daisy," is not a whine. It's just that he's tired and she's noisy and he wants her to stop moving around so quickly. "What are you doing here?"

She turns back toward him and throws his old, ragged quilt over him. The same one he's had since Lavinia used to be the one to tuck him in. Their aunt was always gentle about it, too. Daisy's likely to rip the poor quilt to threadbare shreds with the violence she's applying. Not that it matters, even if it's just a bunch of rags it's tucked in to tightly that he'll never be able to get out under his own power. He gives up and rests his head on the pillow.

"Sugar," she coos, just as sweet as a twittering bird. Seems to think he won't remember her yelling just a few seconds back. "Do you have a headache? A stomach ache? Achy anywhere?" Questions that don't really want answers, not with how fast she's rattling them off. Hand on his forehead again, because just maybe getting into the bed has changed his temperature. "You been drinking liquids?"

No, he's been drinking solids.

"Daisy," he butts in; left to her own devices she'll just keep asking questions and getting more frustrated that he doesn't answer any of them. Even if she's the one who never gives him a chance. "It's just a cold. I'll be fine." Even if that last word sounds more like _fide_. "I ain't sore except in my shoulder and that's from them tight turns on that track up in Wilkesboro." Which he had to do five hundred laps around.

She sits on the edge of his bed and rubs his shoulder, with some girlish fantasy that it's going to help anything at all.

If he's sick, she should get as far away from him as she can. No point in her getting it, too.

"What are you doing here?" he asks again, figures it might get heard this time, now that she's halfway calmed down.

She sighs, and pats his shoulder some more. "I figured I'd come and make you some fried chicken to celebrate all them trophies you been winning. Uncle Jesse is so proud of you. He wanted to come, but the Hendersons' cow is calving and you know how they count on Jesse to midwive." Another sigh, another pat to his shoulder. Her hair is a frizzy mess as a testament to the sweaty weather outside. Or maybe just to the way she's been whirling around his apartment. She's not wearing any makeup and there are dark patches under her eyes. Maybe she's still pining for old L.D. Bo wishes he felt strong enough to wring that jerk's neck. (If he even knew where the jerk was, but he doesn't.) "I'm sorry Luke didn't come with me. He just ain't been no good since he broke up with his girl. I ain't never figured out why he done it or why he ain't gone back to her. She'd take him back if he'd swallow enough pride to ask, but he—"

"Daisy," he interrupts again before she can get real interested in telling him all about the wonderment that was Luke and Hannah. "You said something about fried chicken?"

"You want something to eat, sugar?" And conveniently she's forgotten all about meddling in Luke's life now that she's got Bo's life to meddle in.

He can't swear that he's hungry, but if it'll get her to leave him alone for a little while, he's perfectly willing to send her off to cook him something. He nods.

"Well, I don't reckon that fried chicken would do you no good," she says as she gets up. Bo breathes a little easier; now that her weight isn't pulling at the quilt she tucked around him, it's almost comfortable to lie here. She stands over him a second, then bends down to kiss his forehead, and he's nothing more than a four-year-old again. Except back then it would have been Lavinia doing the kissing, and Daisy would have been kept away from him so she wouldn't catch it, too. Luke would have been allowed to stay around though, on the theory that he had already been exposed. Or because there just wasn't any sense in keeping the two of them apart. Lavinia used to say that all the time. "But I can make you chicken soup."

He reflects, as she leaves him to head off for the kitchen, that it's not so bad that she's put him to bed in here. It's actually pretty comfortable and if he can keep her busy in the kitchen, she won't be able to fuss over him quite so much. He closes his eyes, even though what he's got is nothing more than a cold and he's really not all that tired, he falls asleep.

* * *

Jesse's giving him that look again. The one that asks if he has lost all of his marbles or just the shooters and aggies.

"She don't look ready, is all," Luke defends himself. Sure, Jesse's the livestock and birthing expert, but Luke's seen his share of cows and this one doesn't look like she has any intentions of giving birth in the near future.

Jesse's setting up camp on a bale of straw anyway. He's got his pail of water and his mason jar of 'medicine' (and Luke really would like to know how he plans to get a cow to drink moonshine – he's not a kid anymore and he knows whose mouth that 'medicine' is going into), a pair of gloves, a length of rope, a crumpled tube of lubricant and a large cotton sheet that Mrs. Henderson gave him when they stopped by the house on their way out here. His warm overcoat, even though it's got to be seventy-five degrees. But maybe that part makes sense. It'll cool off come nightfall and this here cow looks like she might get around to giving birth somewhere around winter.

The cow regards Luke with a dark, doleful eye, like she doesn't know why he's there. He's got no answers for her so he shakes his head and plants his hands on his hips while she goes back to nibbling at her hay regardless of her swollen belly.

Heavy, calloused hands on her thick hide, as if Jesse can tell how far along she is with just that little. But his eyes are still on Luke with that same look they've held ever since that morning a month ago when he called home collect from that Gulf station in Demarest to ask if Daisy could spare a couple of hours and about five dollars to bring him the gas he'd need to get back home. Jesse'd answered the phone and asked him what kind of fool left his wallet at his cousin's apartment and didn't go back to get it, but he'd had no answer to give. Daisy rescued him anyway and a box with Bo's boxy chicken scratch on the outside had been delivered to the farm about a week later. His wallet and belt were inside and Jesse had glared at him over it, like he knew that his two nephews had had a falling out of gargantuan proportions, one that there was no recovering from. But he'd left it alone. Just took to looking at Luke like he was the dumbest critter he'd ever caught crawling out from under a rock.

"You got someplace you got to be?" Jesse asks him now. Stops petting the cow and grabs the little milking stool to have himself a seat and wait.

No, Luke doesn't have a dang thing to do, other than lean against the wall of the stall and stare out the barn doors at the sun peeking around fat, white clouds. A perfect day out there for doing nothing at all, and he reckons he ought to just bite his tongue and behave. If he'd bitten his tongue every time he should have in his life, he'd be left with only shreds by now, but he might just have fewer scars on his hind end.

"I'm just saying, she don't look like she's of a mind to give birth any time real soon. And if watching is all she needs right now, well, Mr. Henderson can do that just fine by himself." The man is older than Jesse, but that's not why he's always had Dukes handling his midwiving for him; he's as strong and solid as he ever was. And just as squeamish, too. Hell, on days when he's being more honest and less pious, Jesse will wonder aloud how it is that a man who is afraid of blood ever came to be a dairy farmer anyway. What with the way cows have a habit of calving.

Dark look from down there on that stool. Shouldn't be able to look quite so intimidating when he's only about half of Luke's height, but Jesse's the master of making people squirm no matter how big they are.

"Luke, you're too old for me to have to whip you." Not, Jesse doesn't bother to add, that he wouldn't do it anyway if Luke gave him enough reason. "Now Harley asked for my help and I'm a Duke, so I ain't gonna say no to a man in need. You're a Duke too, but I reckon I can handle this without you if you ain't of a mind to hush up and be helpful."

Luke lets out a breath he didn't ever quite realize he was holding onto, stands up straight and lays a hand on the cow's flank. He still doesn't think she's anywhere near ready and patience no longer seems to be one of his virtues. But Jesse's right, he doesn't have any place else that he needs to be (unless this here calving takes a week or so; by then they really ought to be harvesting what little they grew this year) and Mr. Henderson's a good neighbor that needs the help.

"What do you need me to do?" he asks.

"Just find someplace to park yourself," gets grumbled back at him. "It'll be a while yet." Still glaring at him so he doesn't get any smart ideas about reminding them both that that was his original point to begin with. Luke nods and lets his hand fall away from the cow. Wanders out of the stall to find himself a bale of straw out in the main corridor of the barn and takes a seat. He may be out of Jesse's line of sight, but Luke's still got ears and he can quite clearly hear the mumblings coming from over there.

"You just ain't been worth nothing since you broke up with that girl. She loved you, you know." It's not even a question and yet it's rhetorical. He's not supposed to answer because he wasn't supposed to hear it. What Jesse's muttering to the cow is as sacred as a prayer and overhearing is like eavesdropping. Not going to be forgiven, even if there isn't any way he avoid it. "I ain't got the first idea why you had to go breaking her heart in the first place. She ain't got no idea neither and she ain't never figured out just exactly how much of a buzz saw you is. She'd take you right back." Oh, he knows she would. He's seen her at church, gone back to sitting near the front by herself instead of that back left corner that the Dukes have always favored. She ducks her head until the curls fall across her face and greets him in a small, serious voice whenever they cross paths in the aisle. "If you'd just ask her to."

_(Daisy was gone. It wasn't as bad as Bo leaving him, but it was painful enough. Most of his life had been tangled up in looking out for his hotheaded younger kin. They'd both left and now it was just him and Jesse, who kept telling him not to fuss over Daisy and L.D. and that Bo could handle himself. Which just went to prove the old timer was starting to lose his mind because Bo hadn't handled himself a day in his life. Not that Jesse cared about whether he was making sense or not, he just told Luke to quit fussing over his cousins and start worrying about his own dang life._

_The household chores both thwarted and saved him. It might have been the first time he really appreciated what a woman could do. It was a strange experience, the first time he couldn't count on athleticism or brute strength to carry him through challenging tasks. There was a finesse to scrubbing and washing and caring for clothes – he and Bo hadn't been any good at it back when Daisy had embarked on her brief career in law enforcement (but at least they'd had each other to blame back then) and time hadn't made him any better. Jesse frowned over burnt breakfasts and dusty corners in his house, mumbled notions about what the place really needed was a woman. And glowered at Luke when he asked how, exactly, they could get Daisy back here._

" _I reckon," the old timer told him, "She's where she wants to be. Married. Settled." Got quiet and drank the too-strong coffee in his cup, not the same as when Daisy used to make it for them. Left Luke to work through his words and their implications. Then he started up again. "Last time this place had too many men in it was when your grandmother died. That left just me, your grandfather, your daddy, Bo's, Daisy's, and your uncles Ed, Albert and Thomas. Eight men and no women. I married Lavinia three months later." In case Luke had been too dense to catch the earlier hint. "We never did have any kids of our own, but you boys come to us when you was just babies. Then Daisy followed and we had us a mighty fine family. Boys to inherit the land, a girl to help make sure you was halfway civilized when the time came for you to take over. You want a nice home, Luke, you got to make one for yourself. Your aunt and me, and your cousins, we done all we can do for you. You got to figure this one out on your own."_

_Somewhere in those empty days, Hannah moved to Hazzard. Attended the Methodist church, where Luke didn't notice her or much of anything else other than the length of the sermon. Knew he should be listening like he used to, but now that he wasn't setting a good example for Bo, there didn't seem to be any point. Jesse paid attention and Luke waited for it to be over so he could get back to doing some manner of work around the farm, which always made the time move along faster._

_No, Luke didn't take notice of the new girl in town until after Boss Hogg did, which was a nearly scandalous turn of events. History proved that the Duke boys found girls, Boss only came to know of them if they aided and abetted in Duke schemes._

_Hannah, as it turned out, was her own brand of trouble, just not by her own doing. The Hazzard School District had never had a kindergarten before the fall of 1981, when they decided to get one started. Hannah was hired by the school board that summer and upon her arrival in Hazzard, she went around to homes where there were little kids, talking to parents and telling them how important it was to get an early start on education. Come September she had herself a tiny class or four, but enrollment was left open to any time of year and by her second month in the job she had six kids to work with, then eight._

_About that time, Boss realized that more tax money was going into the school system than into his pockets and he started figuring out how to change that little fact. Didn't take long for getting rid of Hannah to become his main ambition in life. Seemed it was even more important than chasing Luke Duke all around the county, trying to catch him in a parole violation. Luke didn't know Hannah and hadn't ever cared for school, but anything that Boss Hogg wanted gone had to be worth keeping. Had to be good for the community, so he joined in the fight to save the kindergarten._

_It was a pretty short fight – just a call to the State Attorney General, a man that Jesse had dealings with since their moonshining days. Suddenly the Governor was weighing in with his opinion that communities should provide more opportunities for children, not fewer, and declaring that anyone caught reducing budgets for schools would be fined. Boss let out a few defensive puffs of cigar smoke before backing off into a corner to lick his wounds and plot how he was going to get the Dukes in prison or die trying, and Hannah decided that Luke was her knight in shining armor._

_He had quit being a knight and given up his armor the moment he was discharged from the service and nothing about him had shined since the Duke family gave up the liquor business. But Bo was off making his name as a NASCAR driver and Daisy was off being someone's wife. His family had shrunk by half and he figured it was his job to build it back up. Someone had to pass along the Duke name and if a little hero-worship would get the job done, well, he figured he could play at being Hannah's Prince Charming. Even if he'd never been royalty and he lacked for genuine charm.)_

The light is mostly gone from the sky and his back has a twinge between his shoulder blades from sitting still for too long by the time Jesse calls for him. Maybe he dozed off for a minute, maybe Jesse has said his name more than once.

"Hurry up, boy," is the first clear set of words he hears.

"Breech?" He's on his feet and making his way to the birthing stall.

"Nope, just big."

Jesse's pouring the moonshine over his hands and wrists. It's a shame and a waste when they can't just go up into the hills to make more, but Luke holds out his own hands for the same treatment. It's important to be sterile.

"Loop above, half-hitch below," Jesse reminds him, and hands over an end of the rope. They're going to have to help with the birth by tying the rope to the calf's hoofs, which are just starting to emerge, and pulling. It's one of those things at which Jesse is very skilled and Luke would rather not do at all.

It's slow going, just an inch at a time. When the calf is fully birthed, the sky has gone full dark and the lantern's burning from the shelf in the corner. Luke's covered in sweat and worse things that he doesn't want to think about, but Jesse throws an arm around him anyway.

"Luke," he says, and he's still panting. But the cow is nosing and licking at her calf, which is letting out high pitched, shuddering bleats. "I know I ain't said it enough." A pat on his shoulder. "But I'm proud of who you growed up to be."

Luke's smile is wry, because the words are good to hear, even if he knows that 'proud' isn't exactly the word the old man would use if he knew the finer points of his relationship with Bo.

* * *

"Daisy." Somewhere along the line, the world has gone dark outside his window. He reckons he must have slept quite a bit, and if he had a fever before, it's probably broken now. There is absolutely no reason he still needs to be in bed, but there's a bowl of soup being brought into his room anyway. He doesn't have the kind of lap tray that they all grew up eating off of back at the farm – that one's probably three generations old and made out of scrap wood that's been varnished and lacquered a few times over the years – but she manages to improvise anyway. There's the plaque he won in the Chickasaw Challenge back in 1978, pulled off his dresser and wrapped in a towel, with the soup sitting on top. A glass of some kind of juice that she hands to him all careful-like because his hands can be trusted to steer of a vehicle moving at a couple hundred miles per hour, but not to properly hold a cup of liquid.

And if she's so worried about him making a mess, then he should just get up and eat at his dining room table. Or not eat at all. But Daisy pats his cheek and hands him a spoon, so he humors her and devours her soup while she sits gingerly on the edge of the bed.

"Sugar," she starts in when he's eaten and drunk enough to satisfy her mothering needs, and she's put the makeshift tray of dishes on his dresser. "What's wrong with you?"

"I told you Daisy, it's just a cold. Probably just got a little worse because of the race." Daisy knows how hot the cockpit of a stock car can get over the course of four hundred miles. She's driven a race or two, herself. Of course that was in the days before she got all married up and settled. She probably doesn't care a whole lot about racing anymore.

She squints at him. "Don't you lie to me, Bo Duke."

"I ain't lying," he answers back. Which only goes to show just how laid up he is, because it's never wise to mouth off to a Duke woman. He's known that all his life and there he goes doing it anyway. He takes a deep breath, coughs it back out. It's not going to help him any that he can't even sigh without giving her more fuel for her fire. "I ain't been to a doctor. But it feels like a cold."

"Cover your mouth when you cough," she snaps back at him. Folds her arms across her chest and she's probably tapping a foot against his carpet, too. Marking time until he says he's sorry. For yelling or coughing or being sicker than he'll admit – he doesn't even know. And doesn't have the strength to fight with her.

"Sorry Daisy," he mumbles.

"And tell me what's wrong with you." Well, for starts, he has this really annoying cousin that has come more than two hundred miles to tuck him too tightly into his bed, then sit right down and nag him. Then there's the part where he needs to use the bathroom, but doesn't figure he can get out of the bed or get past said cousin without giving up – what? Some password that he doesn't even know. Or a medical diagnosis that he doesn't have.

"Daisy." Luke, if he was here or was even willing to be anywhere near where Bo is, would be chuckling at him now. _You ain't never figured out how to handle her, have you, Bo?_ Not that Luke can handle Daisy all that well either when she starts acting like someone's mother. "I got a cold. I'm sure the soup helped. Now I got to—"

"I'm not talking about your cold, dummy." It's got to be fifteen years since she last called him that. He almost smiles at the memory, but if he does she'll probably stay and keep nattering at him. He's glad she came, really. But in all honesty, all he wants is to be alone. He hasn't much wanted to be around people any more than strictly necessary since that night Luke left him. And maybe he wants to be around his kin least of all. "I'm talking about this." She grabs onto his face with her skinny little fingers that have spent too many years shucking corn. They're damn strong and squeezing in uncomfortable places. "You ain't smiled a real smile in weeks." And if she keeps distorting his face the way she is now, he may never be able to smile again.

"How would you know?" he mumbles out from between his moshed lips. If she doesn't let go of his face soon, he's going to be permanently disfigured. Which would be a shame. He can't claim to care a whole lot right now, but it'd probably be the sort of thing that would lose him some commercial endorsements in the end. His backup driver, Don, has got a pretty enough face to take over that part for him, but he's not half the driver he thinks he is. Maybe he could keep driving and Don could do the advertising; it'd mean a drop in income for him, but what does he need more money for, anyway? Jesse won't take more than he needs to make ends meet and Bo's already got everything he needs, except—

And fortunately, Daisy lets him go so he doesn't have to follow that line of thought all the way to its end.

"You been winning races, but in them interviews after, you ain't hardly smiled." He raises an eyebrow at that one. "Oh, don't look so surprised, Bo Duke. I can go down to Cooter's and watch races if I want to." Just that she never has before. Nor has any girl, and Bo can just imagine all those boys in that garage on race day bristling because they have to hold their tongues from saying anything rough when a lady is present. "Besides, one of us has got to. Luke ain't been going down there since he's all heartbroke about his girl. I don't understand why on earth he would—"

"Daisy, I got to go to the bathroom." He really does, it's getting more urgent and she ought not be surprised about that when she's the one that gave him both soup and whatever that juice was. And she knows full well that he hasn't left this room in hours.

"You didn't sound excited, neither, in them interviews."

"Daisy, would you—" he shoves at the covers that have him tucked in so tidily. Considers shoving her, but figures that he'd rather keep his teeth in his mouth.

"And then you—"

"Daisy!" It's urgent, he figures, that he gets out from under the suddenly too-warm blankets and further away from his girl cousin. She never lets up and he's about at the end of his patience anyway.

"All right, Bo Duke!" she snaps right back at him, gets up to yank his covers back and he pities the blankets and sheets. Figures if they were flesh, they'd be bleeding right now.

But he knows freedom when he sees it. The air is brisk and his bare arms prick up in goose bumps. His tee shirt and the gray sweatpants he put on this morning are suddenly too thin but he gets up and makes his dash for the bathroom anyway. Closes the door behind him and lets out a breath of relief.

Once his actual need to use the bathroom is complete, he stays behind its closed door for a minute or two extra. Just enjoying the silence, but as urgent as this reprieve was for him, he always knew it would be temporary. He's going to have to go back out there and deal with his cousin, and he has nothing he can say to her. He's tired in a way that sleeping all day hasn't much helped, and his brain isn't exactly in top form. He's outmatched. She's probably on the other side of the door right now, listening to his noises in here and tapping her fingernails on her own folded arms. Knowing that he's wasting time and just getting ready to ambush him as soon as he opens the door.

He washes his hands like a good boy so she won't yell at him for that, too, and looks at his reflection. Smiles into the mirror and figures that doesn't make him look any better. Which is a shame because that smile has gotten him out of trouble all his life. If it's not going to work now, he's straight up out of options.

He opens the door and there's Daisy, as expected. Not tapping her fingernails and frowning, but offering him his blanket, the one he had wrapped around himself when she showed up in the first place. He puts it around his shoulders and offers her a smile of thanks before remembering that smiling isn't going to help him any. Heads over to sit on the couch, figuring at least she can't tuck him into that and he'll be able to get up again without making desperate pleas. Even if she does sit right down beside him and touch his forehead again. He shakes her off and ends up coughing some more.

"Serves you right," she reminds him, then sticks her chilly fingers right up there again. He gives her what he figures is a dirty look and settles under her touch. "Better," she announces her assessment of his temperature. "But you still ain't right and don't you go telling me you are, Bo Duke." That's at least two times she's used his full name in a short span of minutes. Soon she'll be looking for a frying pan to beat him with, never mind she has put a good deal of effort into trying to make him healthy again. "You're too skinny, you got circles under your eyes, and just look at your hair."

He'd just as soon not. He doesn't even want to think about how unpleasant it's going to be to comb out a day's worth of knots.

"I ain't never seen you let your hair get so ratty. It don't even shine." Yes, it's a tragedy and he knows it. Without his pretty hair he's just got a pretty face that doesn't smile as well as it used to, and really, he knows he should care about such things. But he just doesn't. "And it ain't like you not to eat." True enough. Luke's got a whole litany of insults about how much he can put away at a single sitting. But it's not like he exactly stopped eating; he just doesn't seem to get as hungry.

"It's been a rough month, is all." There's more he plans to say. About races and his schedule, the physical training that tires him out more than it ever has before. Having to do a greater number of interviews than he used to and there's talk of him getting a new sponsor. A toy, maybe, he can't remember, a matchbox car with his racing number on it? Two weeks ago he had to do a motor oil ad and he never did get the words right. In the end they just showed his smiling face while someone else did the voice over. He could explain all this to Daisy, but it would probably take more effort than he's willing to put into it. And besides, she's already talking again.

"Who is she?"

"What?"

From the way she's looking at him, he's just being her annoying younger cousin again, avoiding her questions the same as he's been ducking away from her forehead-feeling hand. "The girl, Bo. I ain't never seen you act so depressed except when some girl broke your heart. Like Diane. Oh, it ain't Diane again, is it?" She sounds almost thrilled by the notion, even if she never liked the woman any more than the rest of them did. But it sure would make for some juicy gossip. (And what would Luke do if he heard Bo was back with Diane? That might get real interesting, but then again, he's a good boy that was raised not to lie.)

"There ain't no girl, Daisy. And I ain't never heard from Diane after she left Hazzard." He's getting frowned at again. "There ain't no girl," he asserts testily. Not that it matters. Daisy's hand snaps to her hip, even though it's got to be awkward to sit that way.

"Are you going to sit there and tell me your heart ain't been broke?"

"My heart ain't been broke by no girl."

Her eyes pop wide open. Oh, he's such a clever little Duke. He walked right into her trap without either of them even knowing she'd set it. All that careful honesty and telling shades of the truth that he's never been all that good at. Luke's the master of walking that very careful line and most of his life Bo's been able to lay back and let his older cousin do it for them both. Now that he's on his own – really on his own without even a daydream of calling on Luke for help – he has no idea what to do. He reckons his eyes are a mirror image of Daisy's.

"I'm tired." It's a fact, he's been tired for weeks now, even if the yawn he lets out is utterly manufactured. (And probably looks it, too.) He wraps the blanket more tightly around himself and gets his feet under him. "I think I'll—"

"No you won't, Bo Duke," he gets informed, and she's pulling on the blanket hard enough to tear it. Or to force him to come back to her. He sits again, but only on the barest edge of the couch. "You're going to tell me what's bothering you, right now."

"Daisy," he says, tries to muster that authority that makes her let go of whatever she's gnawing on. But again, it's Luke that's always been able to talk sense into her and Luke that's smoothed his path. Luke would know how to handle all the different things coming at him now that he's won a few races in a row, too – the endorsements and the interviews and even the way his pit crew is getting antsy for more. But he doesn't have the luxury of Luke. "It ain't none of your business."

"If you ain't going to tell me, I'll get Uncle Jesse up here. There ain't no way you'd be able to keep whatever it is from him." She'd be surprised what he has kept from Uncle Jesse. But she's got a point. (And so did Luke. Another apology that he'll never be able to offer.) No one's ever asked him a direct question before so he's never had to lie outright but – it's been sneaky all the same. Dishonest. And now he's finally gotten caught in the crosshairs and there's not a whole lot he can do about it. He lets out the breath that he didn't even quite realize he was holding, coughs, and then opens his mouth.

"All right." Besides, maybe he's been aching for someone to talk about it with. Maybe he's kept it a secret for so long that it hardly feels real anymore. And, no matter how much it hurts, he wants it – all of it – to have been real. "Well, you see, back in the summer after I turned fifteen," it's going to be a long night. Maybe he should have offered to make coffee. "Me and Luke—"


	11. Chapter 11

The squeal of the jeep's brakes penetrates the gurgle of running water as he gets to the end of the breakfast dishes. If his girl cousin doesn't start going easier on Dixie, she's going to have to go back to working at The Boar's Nest to earn enough to pay for a few repairs.

He rinses the last fork, puts it in the rack and turns off the water. He's drying his hands on the front of his jeans when the back door slams open hard enough to rattle the spices in their cupboard. It's a good thing Jesse has already headed back over to Harley Henderson's to check on the new mama and her calf, otherwise Daisy would be getting an earful about now. The house isn't young and doesn't take too kindly to violence.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," he starts, puts up his hands in something like surrender when she marches into the kitchen and right up to him, leaving the door to slap shut again behind her. Hard to know what has put her into this mood, but she's always been a bit prone throwing little cloudbursts of tantrums. Whatever's bothering her, the storm won't last long and if he can calm her down before Jesse gets back, he can spare her a lecture.

"Luke Duke," she barks right into his face and he has second thoughts about trying to save her from anything at all. He stands his ground for now, but the minute she reaches for a spatula she'll be on her own. Those suckers leave marks that don't fade for days.

"What did I do?" he asks, half in a laugh. Because she's just having her wiles and being irrational; she'll come around in a minute.

"What did you do?" Her eyes are wide with incredulity, and her hands are on her hips and her skinny elbows point out to either side like bright yellow caution signs. Dangerous curves; apparently he knows exactly what he did and is just being deliberately dense. Which comes as something of a surprise to him. "What did you—" The girl's too caught up in her own anger to go on. She presses her lips together and starts again. "What would you do if L.D. was standing here in front of you, right now?"

"You saw L.D.?" And she has the gall to be looking at him like he's nuts, when she's the one who went off and – what, lied? She was supposed to be going up to Mooresville to check on Bo, at least that's what Jesse told him. But if she went up to Clemmons—

"No, I didn't see L.D." There he goes being deliberately dense again. He really needs to learn to stop doing that. "Just answer the question. What would you do if L.D. was standing in front of you right now?"

Well, that would depend. Would they be standing right here in Uncle Jesse's house? And would Daisy be there between them? Would L.D. be babbling excuses and how much liquor would any of them have consumed for L.D. to have even gotten into the house?

"You'd hit him," she answers her own question, and she's right. It might be delayed just long enough for Luke to work up a good pretense to get him some distance from Daisy so she wouldn't get involved, but yeah. He'd level the idiot. "Wouldn't you?"

"Yep, I reckon I would." It's what she wants to hear and it's safe to say out loud, since Jesse isn't here with quick words about how violence never did solve a single real problem. (Wouldn't solve this one either, but it sure would feel good.)

Now, he figures, she'll calm down and tell him what's really bothering her.

"And why would you hit him?" That's got to be a trick question. This has just turned into one of those girl-arguments, full of logic he can't halfway understand, the sort of thing he has no chance of winning. Leaves his head swimming in questions – does she want to be defended, is he supposed to have said he'd take a step back and let her do the hitting? Or was he supposed to let L.D. take the first swing? "Come on, Luke, it's a simple question. Why would you hit him?"

Sure. Simple when you know the answer in advance. But it's her test and he's just the unwilling pupil with no advance warning about this here pop quiz.

"Because he deserves it." Nope, that's not the right answer. Her knuckles are just about white from the way her fingers are digging into her hip bones, her lips are pressing into each other in a mean little frown and he'd better do some pretty quick calculations about the distance between her and the nearest hard-backed utensil and himself and the door. "Because he's a jerk."

"Hughie Hogg is a jerk," she counters. "You don't hit him every time you see him." No, but half the time he wants to. He's just not quite willing to consign himself to prison, so he forces himself to be patient because eventually, Hughie will annoy the heck out of everyone in town and someone else will do the hitting for him. Or Boss will kick his sneaky nephew out of the county again. (But more than once he had to hold Bo back when Hughie came around. And he can remember how strong Bo really is when he's being kept from something he wants.)

"He's not as big a jerk as L.D.," he assures her. "He didn't marry you then break your heart."

"So it's bad when someone breaks my heart?" How on earth does he get himself into these messes? He ought to have just walked out of here when she slammed in and left her to her tantrum. She could have worked it up into a full out frenzy by the time Jesse got home, and faced the music on her own. (And now would be an excellent time for their uncle to show up and take her off his hands, honestly.)

"Yes." But he's not sure. It's the truth but it's probably not the right answer. She's a full grown woman after all, as she's fond of announcing at all the oddest of times. She can take care of herself, that's her other favorite phrase, even if it never has been wholly true. She mostly does all right in Hazzard, but that's because he and Bo spent their young adulthood teaching the greater part of the men in these parts about the consequences of manhandling her. No one from here would ever consider messing with her now and the only reason L.D. got to her at all was because Luke turned his back for long enough to let the jerk get a foothold. The perils of nursing his own wounds, and Luke's got no plans of ever letting that happen again. "I don't take too kindly to anyone hurting my family."

Of all the insane possible responses to that, she laughs. Too much exhaust from driving all those miles on the interstate in her open jeep, most likely. More intoxicating than the watered down beer of the Boar's Nest.

"What about when someone breaks Bo's heart?" Or maybe it's worse than highway fumes. Years back, Edna Barnes started talking nonsense one day. Her poor husband, Albert, figured she was just being silly, but it got worse. She sounded like someone's demented old grandmother after years of drinking bad moonshine. Then she started walking strange, kind of listing to one side. She lost control of her hands and eventually she was bedridden, drinking through a straw and eating mush. She was gone within six months, in the ground before harvest. Turned out to be a brain tumor and she was only twenty-six when she passed on.

Daisy's getting close to that age now, and already she's starting to act crazy. Hinting that Luke ought to beat up on what—some girl? Some girl that his cousin must have just met and convinced himself he was in love with in the span of a few weeks, and when she saw sense and left him, he convinced himself he had a broken heart. Daisy can fall for it if she wants to, but Luke knows better. Bo kisses too easily, gets swept away faster than he drives, and gets over what he thinks is love before the next cloudy day comes along. He'll be fine.

"I ain't worried about Bo." Up until now this hasn't been anything more than him playing along with Daisy's whim. Now it's gotten personal. His body mirrors hers, his hands on his hips, leaning just slightly forward and frowning right back at her. "He chose what he wants and where he wants to be." Several times, really. Every time Bo gets faced with options, he makes exactly the same decision. NASCAR – and far from Luke – is where he wants to be.

_(Hannah wasn't like any girl he'd ever dated. Or ever thought of dating. She was—well, as all of Hazzard enjoyed pointing out with the subtlety of a tornado tearing through a cornfield, a teacher. The kind of person that a younger Luke Duke had taken great pleasure in tormenting and otherwise driving to insanity or resignation. (Old Mr. Wilson never had come back from his leave of absence in Luke's third grade year; rumor had it that he didn't recover from the snake that was left in his chair by some naughty, blue-eyed boy. Which was silly, it was just a corn snake, it wasn't poisonous and it hadn't done much of anything to Mr. Wilson except flick its tongue at him. Which was a good thing – the old teacher was toxic to kids and probably would have poisoned the poor snake had it bitten him.) Kissing a teacher ranked right up there with drinking turpentine – why do it when you had better options? And Luke always had. Pretty girls and moonshine._

_Hannah was calm, in a way that no Hazzard girl ever was. Not jumping up and down for masculine attention, not likely to sidle around half naked in the town square for the purpose of getting a guy's interest. Not caterwauling to Dolly Parton tunes in the Boar's Nest and for all of those reasons, dating her was novelty enough. Nice, for once, not to have to go out every Saturday night and show her off, just so the other guys would move on her and make him stake his claim all over again. Nice to have peace and quiet around him._

_Quiet, that was the biggest adjustment. After Bo, a freight train passing through the house would be quiet, but Hannah was even quieter than that. Serious, smart, and she only talked when she had something worth saying. She never made dumb jokes, never talked over him and never once let out a rebel yell at the top of her voice. A man could get used to that._

_At least, that was what he figured. It was rough going at first because she wasn't terribly fond of fast driving or bars, knew nothing about farm work and even less about his moonshining heritage. She couldn't fix a fence or even lift a sledgehammer high enough to try, she had never used a tandem saw. And, he couldn't imagine spending eight hours a day in a classroom with five-year-olds, hadn't often cracked a book he didn't have to, and didn't like classical music. Hadn't ever had a friend that went off to college, never mind graduating, and didn't care for the bland, Pennsylvania foods that constituted the entirety of her diet. They had almost nothing in common, but she wanted him anyway, and he figured that as long as he was good to her, it would be enough. A lot of marriages had less going for them than that. Like Boss and Lulu, whose idea of spousal affection was to stuff each other with rich and sugary foods._

_But it was weird, the way she only knew how to slow dance, the fact that she wore far more clothes than any girl he'd ever known, the way she felt under his fingers – fluffy and soft, and he had to be careful not to hurt her. How she didn't say much but she made her wishes known all the same and pretty much got herself obeyed. Jesse smirked at him every time he asked to borrow the pick up to take Hannah to Center City because he knew they were going to see some kind of chamber orchestra or art exhibit or maybe a play. Things Luke had never shown an inclination to attend before but found were not as boring as he'd once feared. They just weren't all that interesting either._

_And they usually got followed up by trips to one of the city's fast food restaurants, easy to spot with their bight primary colored lights poking into the night and leaving the heavens to fade to black nothingness. It was hard, some days, to believe that he was the same person who'd spent his younger life hiding in wooded hollows, sleeping in the dirt and navigating by the stars. His life in the military was less alien to him than the life he was living now._

_And Bo. No Bo anywhere to be looked after or worried about. Not even phone calls because he had made all the damn rules and here they were being obeyed. Bo had never done a damn thing he didn't want to, and here he was deferring to every irrational demand that Luke might make of him._

_Bo was nowhere and everywhere. Every damn thing in his bedroom was half Bo's, every stitch of clothing in his closet and every memory in his head was half Bo's, but Bo was gone and all he had was this boring girl._

_He told himself that he was turning the front porch into a parlor for Daisy. It was a convenient tale and as long as he believed it, he could tell it to Jesse that way, too._

_But somewhere in the back of his head, there was a tickle of a thought. This was his life now; slower, quieter, carefully cultivated. And building the room was a deliberate process towards saying goodbye to everything that had been, to seal it all away. Asking Hannah to marry him gave him an excuse to go up into the attic and pull down the floppy old mattress that had belonged to his father and mother before him. The frame had been in pieces that had taken all of his meager carpentry knowledge (and a few trips to Rhuebottoms for varied and sundry hardware) to reassemble. He'd had to do some fence-building for the widow Harcourt and a few odd jobs for the Wilkersons down on Cherry Lane who had too many kids and not enough time to fix all the many things they broke, in order to save enough money to buy a new box spring to replace the one that the mice had nested in. And he'd gone up the rickety ladder into the dormered attic one last time, into that corner where Lavinia's hope chest sat, still full of her sweaters, where her wooden rocker sat lonely and still. He'd found the needlepoint, the one about how love was not put in your heart to stay but wasn't love until you gave it away, and put it in the new room. The sole decoration and it wasn't a photo or a trophy or a school-art drawing of a car, but it was just as wrapped up in Bo as anything in their shared bedroom ever had been._

_He had given his love to Bo, who had run off to NASCAR with it. It was gone now, he couldn't give it to Hannah. But she could love him and he could be kind to her and that would have to be enough.)_

The slap across his face leaves a nasty sting behind and makes his eyes water.

"Luke Duke, you are the most hard-headed, selfish, mean-hearted man I have even known. Worse than L.D.," gets spat at him in pure fury, Daisy's hair flying as she recoils from her own violent motion.

"Whoa." His left hand grabs her right. He has to remind himself to be gentle, that she's smaller than him and weaker, even if she has most likely left a big, red welt on his cheek. No matter, she swings her free hand at him and if the second slap isn't as hard, it's twice as annoying. "I said, whoa, Daisy." He catches her other wrist.

"I heard you, and I ain't no horse." But she's calming down. She's barely even struggling against his grip. "I ain't gonna hit you no more," she concedes, and that's a relief. For now, because she's not promising a lifetime of not hitting him, just that if he lets go of her hands, she doesn't plan to slap him again right away.

He lets go of her bony wrists anyway, even without any long-term guarantees.

"Listen," is the beginning of him trying to make this whole conversation end. To put it to bed before it can lead to bad places. "I reckon you like Hannah and figure I shouldn't have broke up with her. But it's for the best that I let her go. I wasn't good enough for her."

"You're dang right you ain't." And see, already they've found something they can agree on. Maybe he can still manage to put a stop to this whole mess before Jesse has to get involved. "She didn't never have a chance with you, when you was in love with Bo."

His stomach takes to spinning like one of those washing machines in the Laundromat downtown. The kind with the glass windows that let you see all the dizzying colors swirling together, and he reckons his breakfast is probably going clockwise. Eggs and toast and sausage, and all of it moving too fast for anyone's good. He folds his arms across his chest to try to hold it all in.

"What?" It comes out a little louder than he means for it to, but then again his heart has crawled up into his throat to get away from his spinning stomach. It's hard to push the word past the throbbing lump of it.

"Don't you even pretend you don't know what I am talking about," comes back at him as an echo of those flashing eyes, that right hand that's making up its mind whether he needs to get hit again. Maybe the shock would do him good. Send his stomach spinning the other way and get his heart back down to where it belongs.

Then again, his cheek's still raw from the last time.

He puts his hands up in surrender again. Admitting to nothing, just like he got taught all those years ago, but he knows he's as good as cuffed and stuffed anyway. No need for a trial when both of them in this kitchen know he's guilty, and he only wishes that the punishment was prison. It'd be easier to take than whatever's about to come at him now.

"I can't believe," she says to him, and whatever's going to follow, he reckons he agrees with her. He and Bo covered their tracks so well that it's pretty hard for even him to believe that it all happened. Plus, he's having a whole lot of trouble believing that his younger cousin, the one who chose to go off to NASCAR rather than tell their kin, is the one who enlightened her. "What you done to him."

"What I done to him?" Hell, Bo's the one who started this thing, the one who started it a second time, the one who—but she's only heard the one side of it. And that's all she's going to hear, so if she wants to go on her whole life thinking Bo's the saint and he's the sinner, she's got a right to.

He can't precisely go and claim innocence anyway. It took two of them to make the mess so wonderfully messy.

"You broke his heart."

Then again, maybe there are a few things that he needs to set straight.

"I didn't break nothing. He always had choices, Daisy. He picked NASCAR over being with me."

For a second, and only that long, he considers pinching himself. That whole sense of how this can't be real and – aside from the way his heart's still pounding in his chest and his ears and everywhere in between – feels like some kind of a crazy dream. One that's bad and good all at once, because Daisy knows about him and Bo and rather than curse him for having sex with his baby cousin, she's cursing him for – well, for not having sex with his baby cousin. For walking away from sex with his baby cousin for the greater good of the whole family.

And she's about to hit him again for that. Or for saying what he did about the choices Bo made, or for just generally being in front of her when she's this mad. Then it stops and she stamps her foot like a child having a full-out temper tantrum.

"Choices – Luke, you're a damned fool." Well, he's never claimed to be anything different. And she'd better calm down or she really will get herself whipped when Jesse gets home. Funny how he's the only one of the three cousins that's ever had permission to say 'damn' out loud, but he halfway figures it's because Jesse knows that he learned all manner of ways to curse in the Marines and toning it all down to 'damn' is showing a good deal of restraint.

And if Daisy's going to get whipped for cursing, he's going to get sent to live in the barn with the animals when Jesse overhears what it is that got her this upset.

"Look," he tries to explain. She's not even looking at him anymore; her eyes are fixed somewhere out the dust-covered window over the sink. "The way I see it—"

"The way you see it?" Her eyes are back on him, glinting dangerously. She's on the verge of tears and he doesn't even know why. "Luke Duke, you couldn't see an elephant if it was standing on your toe. Bo's up there in Mooresville looking worse than I ever seen him. He's sick and he's sad and he ain't hardly taking care of himself."

"He's been winning races, Daisy. He can't be that bad off." He doesn't watch them anymore, tells himself that he doesn't want to know. But he still winds up picking up Jesse's Hazzard Gazette from where it's all nice and neatly folded on the table next to the easy chair when the oldster's done with it in the afternoon. He has no intention to, but he always ends up in the sports pages anyway, looking at the NASCAR standings. Bo's been doing better over the past three weeks than he did in the three years that came before.

She gets that distant look in her eyes again, focusing past him on something that only she can see. "I ain't sure about that part," she admits. "Except I figure that he doesn't think he has anything to lose anymore. Like me coming home a few months back. You remember that?"

How could he forget? The broken look to her, the way she carried herself like a whipped pup. And Bo bringing her down in the General – how good it was to see him.

"I knew things between me and L.D. was going bad for a while, Luke. We wasn't so much fighting as hardly talking to each other. And maybe some part of me knew that we couldn't last much longer." There's a little choking noise at the end of that sentence that makes him want to go back to the beginning part of this conversation all over again. The part where he was hitting L.D. for breaking her heart and just generally being a jackass. "But I didn't want to tell Uncle Jesse about it, I didn't want to rile him. Or get that talk about how love is the most important thing and if I really loved L.D., I'd – I don't even know. I was scared to know. Then L.D. left and I wasn't so sacred no more. Whatever Uncle Jesse was going to say to me," whatever punishment she imagined would be meted out. Luke can understand the fear, in theory, though he knows that Jesse would never get upset with Daisy for what L.D. did to her. He probably wouldn't even get upset if she'd been the one to do the leaving, as long as she had a good reason. "It didn't hardly matter. I didn't have nothing more to lose. I figure Bo's like that. He can be reckless on the track now." She looks at him again, not angry anymore. Just sad. "He ain't got nothing more to lose."

"He's where he always wanted to be," Luke asserts, quietly. The kind of voice that most people recognize as dangerous, but Daisy, she's always played by different rules. Of all things, she decides that this is a good time to step forward and touch his face. To feel the heat from where she smacked it. He jerks his head away from the touch, wrenching a streak of pain down the back of his neck to his shoulder blade. "Winning on the NASCAR circuit. Wouldn't none of us keep him from that, Daisy." He rubs at his neck and steps back from her with a loose plan of going off to the barn and finding some chore that needs doing, but he doesn't make it that far. Daisy's hand is on him again, carefully touching his arm this time. Just holding him there with that little and he doesn't want to stay and talk to her another minute.

She lets out a deep breath like she's still calming some part of herself down enough to be civil to him.

"Uncle Jesse says there's two sides to everything. I reckon I don't know your side." Her hand comes back off him then and when he lifts his eyes to look at her, she's got it raised in some kind of defense. "I reckon I won't never, neither." Which is strange; normally she's on him like a hound after a bone to get to the juiciest part of any story, but maybe there are some details even a gossip doesn't want to know. Like the way her two male cousins have been rolling around in the farmyard, on and off, for years. Right under her nose and maybe she's just as glad that they kept the secret as long as they did. "All I know for sure right now is that Bo loves you. With everything in him and all he really wants is you. And Luke, you got to trust me on this one. You don't walk out on someone who wants to love you like that. You just – you don't."

He ought to hug her or something, because what she's talking about now isn't, despite how strongly she would insist otherwise, about him and Bo. She's been walked away from like yesterday's leftovers that can't possibly be worth tasting a second time. But he's not exactly feeling all that pleasantly disposed toward her on a day when she's slapped him twice and then announced at full volume that she knows something about him that he spent years keeping from her. The best he can do is stand still and let her rub his cheek in some attempt erase the red mark that she left there.

"You need to go to him," she insists. He glares at her, steps back and folds his arms across his chest. "Now. Today. I'll think of some reason to tell Jesse you went. I ain't gonna tell him… _that_. That's your business to tell him." She makes it sound like some sort of a noble gesture on her part, when really, it's just self-preservation. She doesn't want to take their lumps for them, to endure an earful of furious Jesse on their behalf. "Go on. I'll take care of the chores."

No. And not just because of the chores, which she only half knows how to do anymore, and not because of the pass he'd have to finagle from Boss Hogg, who isn't likely to be too friendly after the most recent time Luke caught him robbing his own bank for the insurance money. No, because nothing has changed. Other than Daisy finding out and he's not to thrilled about that part. No, because he can't trust himself not to just – start brawling with Bo, and that has never, not once, led to good places. Just no.


	12. Chapter 12

"No." It's ridiculous, comes out as pathetic as a kitten's mewl. No, because the last thing he figured on was finding Luke there on the other side of his door frame, but there he is. Nodding and stepping in anyway, closing the door behind him. Whatever's going to happen next needs to take place inside these four walls, not out in the entryway before the fascinated eyes of his too-proximate neighbors.

"Bo," Luke says, like he has half a right. Already – what? Tense? Upset? Ready to hit him, probably, because that's how Luke has to start things. Okay, yes, Bo has started them that way, too. Maybe more times than Luke has, definitely before Luke ever would have thought to but he's outgrown it now. He doesn't need stupid excuses and violence to start something between them anymore. (And maybe he misses the days when he did. It might have been stupid and childish, but it always worked and usually ended with Luke wrapped tightly around him like he'd never let go.) His cousin takes a step toward him, and he backs away. Dumb thing to do; he knows that. Still—

"No," he says again, and it's even worse. Higher, more agitated. Wetter, and damn it. Three weeks, it's taken him that long, since Daisy left him a pink, sniveling, fevered mess, to pull himself out of it. To admit what he was doing to himself and how it wasn't helping anything at all. To force back the depression and reconnect to his life here in Mooresville, on the circuit. Far from where he grew up with its familiar curve of the land and pattern of the seasons, but it's all right. Friends, girls, hard work and of course the races – it's a good life. Better than his long-gone parents could ever have wished for him, really, better than any Duke before him ever had. No drafts in his walls, plenty of money to fix them if there were, and nothing of real consequence to worry about.

Except, maybe, this.

And three weeks isn't enough. Not nearly enough time to have gotten over someone that he's loved since he was fifteen. Sure, he's had three different girls practically propose marriage to him in that time and two of them even made it back here with him for a night (or two, that dark-haired Kerri had been worth a second go), but they haven't made a dent. Not even the tiniest bit of a dent in helping him to get over Luke.

"Luke," he says, or means to. It breaks in the middle, cracks into little pieces and he can't swallow them down. Too sharp, like some kind of cheap imitation crystal that couldn't withstand a raucous family party. Shards trying to cut him to ribbons, and Luke steps forward again.

At least he thinks Luke does. It's hard to say when the walls of his own apartment are rolling and blurring and the distance from here to there but – Luke's hands on his shoulders.

He can't even squeak out another no, so he just shakes his head.

Luke has always hated it when he cries. Mad or scornful or just plain telling him to cut it out, because boys shouldn't and grown men sure as hell wouldn't. Bo tries to step back from him again but the world's closing in on him or he's lost track of where he is in the space of his own living room-turned-dining room. A chair, one of the cheap folding metal kind that he sometimes sits on when he decides to eat at his table, tangles up with his leg. Clangs against his ankle bone and that smarts. Also trips him up pretty good, he hops and steps and just about figures he's doomed to land sorely on his backside when Luke's grip on his shoulders gets tighter, warmer, steadier.

"Watch yourself," gets mumbled into the air between them and that's the last thing he hears before the storm in his head takes over. Lightning, thunder and rain. His arms catch around Luke's waist, fingers gripping at the blue flannel for a handhold against the deluge. Struggles to breathe and feels Luke's hand against the back of his neck. Rubbing back and forth to get him calmed down and he buries his face in Luke's shoulder. The fabric of his shirt rustling where Luke's other hand is rubbing his back, his breath keeps sawing in and out of his mouth. Not enough air and he's almost dizzy from it.

Luke tips his head to kiss the corner of his jaw and—

No. "No," he gets out, stronger than before. Pushes back against Luke's chest until he's got his own separate space. "You ain't doing this to me again, Luke. You ain't."

There's a fight getting ready to get started in Luke's eyes. That mean look that follows after any time he doesn't get exactly what he wants, and Bo braces himself for it. The words, the fist, however Luke sees fit to dish it out this time, and then it stops. The muscles that were halfway to tightening in Luke's jaw relax, his shoulders drop and he just looks sad. Older, too, his hair's a mess and the lines on his face are deeper set than Bo remembers them ever having been before. He just nods. "I'm sorry, Bo," he mumbles.

Bo wipes his eyes with the back of his hand like a little kid, then wipes his hands on his jeans. Tries to sniffle up what wants to run out of his nose, and he's a fool caught without a handkerchief. Doesn't work too well so he sniffles again, only it's more of a snuffle. A really loud snort.

Luke just laughs and steps forward to wrap his arms around him again. And Bo knows better, knows so much better from so many times that things have worked out exactly the same way, but he doesn't care about those. Not right now when Luke's shoulder is right there for him to rest his head on.

* * *

The hug has to end. One man can't hold onto another forever, even under the best of circumstances. There's still life to be lived, crops to grow if there's going to be enough food to eat, a house to maintain, livestock to be fed and cleaned up after. And that's just under the best of circumstances, which this is not. This is Bo so angry at him that he's been brought to tears, this is Bo not trusting him. Which is about as bad as circumstances can get.

Bo lifts his head, takes his time about it because he's Bo and always has done better when he can be close to people (and here Luke has left him isolated for years – NASCAR circuit or not, when Luke digs down into himself past all the words and thoughts to where the truly honest parts of him are, he reckons that Bo hasn't been exactly happy here), takes the tiniest of steps to give himself some breathing room. Luke lets him go, even if he doesn't want to, even if he knows that what comes before and after hugs is generally hard and painful and he's not exactly eager to make his way through it.

Three weeks, he gave himself three whole weeks to work through this and none of it is any good when he's standing here with a wet shoulder and a six-foot-four inch man with a pink face and wet eyes getting rubbed at by his hands again. A sniffle, a cough and then he's under just as much pressure and scrutiny as he was back home where Daisy spent every waking minute of those three weeks giving him the stink eye for how he'd gone off and disobeyed her. She'd wanted him to come up here to Bo's that very day she confronted him and he'd waited, shuffling through his anger and resentment, finding glimpses of his own conscience. It hadn't been easy and if he hadn't found excuses to get himself away from Daisy for hours at a time, all the promises of secrecy in the world wouldn't have mattered because Jesse would have started demanding to know what was going on between the two of them. As it was they were fortunate enough that Jesse figured Daisy was still upset about L.D. leaving her and Luke was still sore about breaking up with Hannah. Must've made it seem reasonable that they'd both be walking around with sour faces, but that kind of sulking would only be tolerated for so long in Jesse Duke's house, anyway. Eventually the question would have come and it would have been direct and unavoidable.

But that's not why he came here. Mostly not, anyway, maybe it's all tied up in the whole mess somehow. He doesn't want Jesse to know what got between his two nephews, but if it's going to come out anyway – and maybe it is, he can't be sure – he pretty much figures he wants to have made peace with Bo first. To know for himself what Bo wants now and what he might have wanted back when he chose NASCAR over Luke. Whether anything's changed and—

None of that matters the same way anymore. Not looking at Bo now, watching him fail in a spectacular way to wipe away any evidence of the tears he just let out, not seeing how even behind that effort it's still there. The way he's watching carefully because he wants Luke but doesn't trust him.

It would be easy now to step right up and kiss him. To lay down with him on the bed or the couch, to let their bodies do what their brains and mouths always seem to get wrong. It would be perfectly simple and perfectly natural and that's why he can't do it. Wrapping their sex in pity isn't going to end any better than wrapping it in violence ever has. In the end, there will always be those big, unanswerable questions. Or at least questions that they've never managed to answer before.

"What now, Luke?" And there's one of them, right there. Bo looking to him to give him the plan or lead him to safety. Like this is nothing more than a moonshine run gone bad and a few fancy moves will get them out of jeopardy.

Luke looks at him, really looks for the first time since that day back in July when Bo brought Daisy home. From the shaggy fall of his hair to the pink toes sticking out from the holes in his socks, Bo's a mess. A mess that's got to be cleaned up and even if Luke made that mess, he's not sure he's the one that ought to be doing any cleaning.

Still, he takes that step forward, right back into Bo's space. Slips an arm around his back and notices, or maybe it's more like pays attention, to how narrow Bo's waist is. The ribs he can too easily count, and he doesn't like it. Somewhere between the efforts of a sadistic physical trainer and a lousy lover of a cousin, Bo's gotten far too skinny.

Luke tips his head up and kisses him anyway. Sweet and slow, not building to anything at all. Just being gentle because that's what he figures Bo needs. Tastes the salt of Bo's tears covering up most of the buttery edge of whatever Bo had for breakfast this morning, and that brings him back to himself. About what he's not going to start, not like this.

"I reckon that's up to you." What comes next, that is. Whether or not Bo's willing to take a chance on being with Luke and all the problems it'll cause – because it'll cause plenty and Daisy's promise not to tell Jesse aside, if they get together this time, the old timer's got to be told. Which is about as sore a point between them as any other, and yet it's only one drop in a waterfall of problems.

But if Bo wants to—

Luke kisses him again, short and sweet. Rubs his hand against Bo's hair and steps back. The arm that's been looped loosely around his shoulder pulls him close again, then lets him go enough to separate, though the hand stays heavy and warm on his shoulder.

"I got to go," he says and Bo nods back at him. Accepting things he doesn't really like, but he's always been a good sport. No matter how many ways he's been a spoiled brat, Bo has always made the best of whatever life has thrown at him. Luke lifts his hand up to run the backs of his fingers across Bo's cheek that's still hotly flushed from his tears. Stops when his knuckles hit sideburn, drops his hand and steps back; Bo's hand falls away from his shoulder. "You take care of yourself," he says and it probably sounds the same as it has a hundred times before, but this time he means it. Bo needs to take better care of himself.

He heads for the door, thinking that this is the second time in a row that he has gotten himself a three day pass to be outside of Georgia, and here he is, heading back home long before he has to.

This time it feels right. Still, he checks to make sure he has his wallet with him before he gets into the pickup for that long drive back to Hazzard.

* * *

Of all the things Luke has ever been to him, cousin might just be the best. At least on days like this, when the skies are nicely overcast, there's a wet edge to the warm breeze and a siren singing its little heart out behind them. All the comforts of home.

"What did we do this time?" said with false annoyance and this could be a moment out of the summer of 1980.

"Does it matter?" Luke asks him right back. "Just keep her moving."

There's wood smoke in the air here, not like a still (or not like a still run by a pro that would make sure that the were using ash wood and even so would certainly make sure no breeze could carry anything like smoke toward a road, dirt or otherwise) but a fireplace. Like home on a cold day with him and Luke laying shoulder to shoulder on their bellies in front of the fire and poring over the glossy pictures in car magazines. The dust kicks up behind them as he skids around the tight corner from Dunkirk Road onto the Ridge Road, his fingers wrapped around the hard plastic of the General's steering wheel and turning with memorized precision. Just enough over steer to cause one fabulous fishtail that kicks up a shower of dust that could bury a small car. He reckons that old Enos is back there choking and sputtering, slowing down because it's really the only safe thing he can do. But he'd better be careful because Rosco's right behind and on the verge of ramming him for all he's worth.

Which would be a crying shame because Bo's not ready for this chase to end. It's about the best five minutes he's spent behind the wheel in years, and considering how many laps he's driven around the most prestigious tracks in the country, that's really saying something.

It's good to be home. Phone lines opened up between him and Luke after that day his cousin showed up in Mooresville just to wrap his arms around him. To offer apologies and careful kisses full of regret and sorrow, then leave again. They've talked since then, though not a lot of consequence has been said. Just _how are things going_ and _can you get us tickets to your next race_ and _why don't you stop by_. _Come home to Hazzard_.

So he has. For a little while, anyway, he's not here for more than a few days. Just a pit stop between here and there. Sunday was the Atlanta 500 and it was a disaster from beginning to his early end when he drove off the track in the hundred thirty-sixth lap with his engine engulfed in black smoke. But it was all right, because for the first time since he went on the circuit he had his family waiting for him afterward. Sure, he would have liked to have won a race with Luke sitting in the stands, but having Luke there when it was all over was nice enough. Even if they couldn't offer more than simple hugs of greeting to each other and haven't intentionally touched each other since.

The sirens behind him change pitch when he skirts around the kudzu-covered cinderblock remnants of an ancient storage house, abandoned before he and Luke were even born. Jesse might know what it was, might not care. Bo doesn't, he just likes how it acts as a temporary shield between them and the silly boys in uniform that have taken off after them for no reason that he can think of, other than nostalgia. Or maybe they're like bulls charging on a matador – they've seen orange and all other thought is banished in deference to the chase.

"Go left up here," Luke tells him unnecessarily, and all really is right with the world. His cousin's giving him instructions that he doesn't need.

_(It was strange – at first that was all it was. Like having a constant cold breeze to his right or chronically sleeping arm. Harder to do anything at all when he felt like he was only half of what he'd always been._

_Introducing himself to person after person in his new hometown and that was all right. He knew how to do that just fine, to smile and offer his hand to shake. He was friendly enough, everyone had always said that about him._

_Bo, he's the friendly one of the Duke boys._

_And that, right there, was the thing. All his life, he'd been a Duke boy. One of a nearly matched set. Bo-and-Luke-Duke, they're-cousins. Following after Luke through school with teachers asking why he wasn't as good at math and kids asking why he didn't play baseball. Because for all his life, everything Luke did reflected back on him, influencing everyone's expectations of who he was._

_And even beyond Luke, there was the fact that he was a Duke and no one ever doubted what he'd do with his life. Teachers quit bothering with teaching him much of anything after the tenth grade because exactly how much did he need to know about iambic pentameter to cook up a batch of moonshine, anyway? (Chemistry – now that was a class where he was expected to excel. And he did all right, really, as long as he paid attention.)_

_He'd never had to answer too many questions about himself or had to think about how to explain his life to anyone. To people from Hazzard he was a no-account Duke (except when he was a hero) and to people from outside Hazzard, he was a rube. It was simple. And if it ever got complex, Luke was always there at his side to clear things up – or make them more confusing, depending on what the circumstances dictated._

_A lifetime of habit crumbled to dust in those first days of NASCAR when he had a whole new cast of characters to deal with and his pretty smile and charming ways didn't impress a single one of them. (With the possible exception of Cheryl, who answered phones and otherwise kept things organized in the Reed offices, but he didn't exactly get to spend any time with her. Just saw the way her eyes lit up when they were introduced and then it was right back to dealing with the likes of trainers, crew members and other drivers. None of whom were too impressed with Bo Duke from Nowhere Important, Georgia.) His dirt track record didn't mean a thing to them either, and somehow or other he was both too young and too old; just a kid, but really he should have driven his first NASCAR track years ago if he was ever going to be any good._

_Chief Meade liked him well enough from the start, and maybe that helped. Maybe being a Duke stood him in good stead there, not for the name or the reputation but for the integrity. Or maybe he was just skilled at dealing with short-tempered older men, knowing almost instinctively when to dip his head and be repentant._

_Pedro rode him hard and called him lazy for endless weeks into months and he wished for Luke more times than he would ever want to admit because Pedro was a bully and if there was one thing Luke did, no matter how ugly things between the cousins ever got, it was to dispatch bullies for him. To clear his path of anyone who threatened him in any way, no matter how subtly._

_Pull ups were easy for him; he could manage more than Don or Lem and still Pedro wouldn't let up on him. The lunges and squat thrusts didn't come as easy to his long legs, which only got him given more of them to do. The weight lifting wasn't bad, he kind of liked seeing the progress he could make there. But the running, that was the worst. Miles of going nowhere important, not running to or from anything, just around and around in pointless circles. It was stupid and he grumbled a lot, which might have been why Pedro kept spinning his finger in the air when Bo would make a lap past him, the silent signal to go around one more time. And another one after that until it was just ridiculous and he was wearing holes in the soles of nearly-new running shoes. Jesse would tan his hide, had he been so wasteful in Hazzard._

_But he wasn't in Hazzard and Luke wasn't there to protect him, nor Jesse to whip him, so he had to improvise. He was the one who started calling Pedro 'Butch.' It began as a joke that even he didn't quite know the punch line of, but it stuck. Pedro took to it and took to Bo all in the same season and it seemed like something. Like Bo had found his way._

_But he hadn't, not really. Lem was the senior driver on the team and a big, squared off redhead with a mean temper. He'd been driving since Bo was still in shorts with dirty knees, asking to go fishing with Luke and Jesse but getting left behind with Daisy and Lavinia. He didn't have any interest whatsoever in spending even a minute talking to Bo Duke about anything – racing or otherwise. And he didn't appreciate young drivers who could keep up with him on practice laps, either. Mostly he figured Bo would do best to worship him from afar. Very far._

_Don was the other junior driver on the team, who clung to Bo like a nettle. A lonely nettle without much to offer by way of fun because Don bought into all that nonsense Pedro was always spewing (or otherwise just believed on his own) about how the body was a temple and needed worship. No alcohol other than the occasional light beer passed Don's lips and he didn't like good food, either. Girls, now those he was perfectly willing to help himself to, but he was handsome to Bo's pretty, not quite as tall but definitely had well-cut muscles, and near-black hair. Someone nicknamed him Superman (Bo's money was on Chief Meade for that one – Chief didn't suffer fools gladly and Don was definitely something of a fool) which fit all too well, and Bo quickly learned not to go out looking for girls with Don. Unless he wanted leftovers when he was used to prime cut._

_(He was used to Luke, and that was half the problem.)_

_It was a rough start and he never would have figured he could miss anyone as much as he missed his family. He never would have figured he would miss Boss or Rosco at all, but he did. At least he knew those two were fools that could be tricked into tripping over their own shoelaces. The guys at NASCAR were a heck of a lot smarter, and they liked him a heck of a lot less._

_That was what he thought, anyway, and it took several weeks before he was even practicing his driving in any kind of a real way, with a crew to back him up. Must have been three months in before he met Itchy and Bubs. They were good guys, fun-loving and laid back, kind of like the group of friends he and Luke had hung out with when they were younger. Dobro and Cooter and Brody weren't all that different from these guys, and Bo started to settle down. Started to find his feet and his wheels, started to enjoy NASCAR and driving just a little bit._

_On good days, when he'd put in a strong performance on the track and hadn't had to do too many lunges for Butch, he'd congratulate himself on the progress of his life. On those days he'd tell himself that everything that had happened was good. That it was about time he stopped being half of a pair, stopped being judged by his last name. That is was about time that he stepped out of Luke's shadow.)_

"Bo!" Luke's perfectly normal annoyed voice. The sound is as familiar as a bird chirping in the trees. (He pays it about that much attention, too.) "Go left, go left!"

But his life is nothing but left turns now. Loops and loops of left turns on tight tracks and loose ones, with steep banks and hardly any bank at all. He's about sick of left turns, and of his course being prescribed and prearranged for him. He goes right.

Luke's face lets him know just how funny that wasn't. After, that is, he gets his balance centered again from where he was temporarily shifted into the console between them. His lips are flat and his head shakes, but those eyes are a brighter blue than Bo has seen them since – well, in years, anyway. Bo laughs at his miffed little face, has the strangest urge to kiss it. But he can't.

He goes back to concentrating on the dirt in front of them, what might loosely be called a road though it hasn't ever been properly graded and seems to be growing over with weeds. The kind of place he and Luke used to haunt on a near-daily basis and it looks like it's gone to seed since he's been gone. He bumps over rocks that weren't there before (or maybe he's remembering this place all wrong) and gets a grunt from the passenger seat with every bounce. Any minute now he's going to get told that he's bruising Luke's kidneys, and even if those kidneys need a good bruising, Bo slows anyway. Enos is still gamely trying to keep up; Rosco's fallen far behind. They're not going to catch him, and even if they do, Luke will talk their way out of it. There's no reason to go breaking an axle or bruising a kidney.

"Ha ha!" he says when he hears the sound of metal bending somewhere behind them.

Luke twists around in his seat, up on his knees like the old days when they used to keep their bows in the back. Another pang of nostalgia washes through him and his stomach feels sour. Like it's full of one-winged butterflies that just can't quite get to flying like they used to.

There are times – and many of them have occurred in the sixteen hours or so that he's been skulking around his old stomping grounds here in Hazzard – when he wishes he'd never kissed Luke that first time. If there hadn't been a first there couldn't have been a second or a hundredth and he could have lived here all along, doing just this. Playing games on bumpy hillsides with horses galloping out of their path as they lead lawmen down to the bank of the lake, where there's a fifty-fifty chance that someone in blue will find themselves getting unmistakably wet. And then he tells himself there's no point in imagining his past away.

"He's okay," Luke announces without specifying which of the two cars behind them has run into what.

The ground levels out in front of them, opening all manner of possibilities. Not a simple right or left down here, it's a meadow that can be crossed any way they like and this, right here, is his idea of perfection.

His hand bumps up against Luke's when he reaches over to shift the General into a lower gear and he laughs, even if it isn't funny. How they've gotten out of synch with each other, no longer two halves of one well-oiled whole. Somewhere in his early NASCAR days, after several embarrassing missteps, he relearned shifting his own gears without that left hand of Luke's reaching over to do it for him.

Luke plays their current misfire off like it's nothing more than a random bit of clumsiness on his own part, and those butterflies do their sad, one-winged flops in Bo's belly again. Games are fun (and poor Rosco, limping to the bottom of the rocky incline behind them in his newly dented cruiser might disagree with that notion) as long as it's him and Luke against the world. This other thing, where they pretend to be nothing more than cousins – who sleep in separate rooms because Luke's still spending his nights in that space that he carved out for his marriage bed – isn't so much a game as torture.

Enos makes up quite a bit of ground once he gets to the meadow, because unlike Bo, he doesn't have to make any real decisions about which direction to go. He just follows where he's led and Bo's going to turn that to his advantage in a minute. As soon as Rosco catches up.

 _I reckon that's up to you_. Those words Luke said back in Mooresville have swilled around in his brain like that little bit of moonshine that coated the bottom of any mason jar – those few drops saved for the morning after. Hair of the dog and it's been nagging at him ever since. Up to him, but it was him that started this thing between them in the first place. His kissing and rubbing in the middle of what should have been a perfectly normal wrestling match, and where has it gotten them? To that place where Luke pretends they never touched each other, even accidentally, as they both went to shift the car at the same time, and where Bo's belly is full of maimed butterflies. No place good.

But it's up to him.

Two weeks of thinking about it hasn't done him any good; being home with Luke overnight hasn't helped any, either. He's just not made for days to weeks of thinking about a thing. His decisions are better made on the fly.

Like this one. Luke's pointing him off to the north (at least he thinks it's north – he's not the one with a compass in his head) but he's driving a wide arc off toward the opposite edge of the property. If memory serves, this is Zeke Moore's meadow that's never grown a whole lot more than buttercups and stones, but his sheep have liked spending their spring and summer months out here grazing anyway. Bo hurtles at full speed toward the gully that runs along the far edge of what Moore owns, gets yelled at by Luke. His cousin's arm up in some imitation of protecting his face (or hiding his eyes) because he knows what's ahead of them.

But Enos, and Rosco behind him, are far too used to the paved streets of town. Probably more now than ever, what with both Bo and the General having been far out of their purview for years. Enos' little stay in Los Angeles couldn't have helped either.

"Bo!" Luke complains and for such a smart and brave guy, his cousin's a fool. Or has forgotten how to have fun when everything's moving too fast, balanced on the edge of a razor blade in a high wind.

Bo hits the brakes anyway, pulls the steering wheel hard into a glorious right turn that leaves dirt clumps thudding to the ground a good thirty feet behind them. Drives safely parallel to the barbed wire fence that Enos never sees until the front end of his cruiser hits it with the discordant twang of a broken guitar being played by a drunkard. Rosco, who somehow neither sees the barbed wire nor Enos' car, or just plain can't get his foot from the accelerator to the brake in half the time it would take to avoid both, smashes one cruiser into the other as percussion to Enos' guitar. The two of them start shouting back and forth in an off key chorus and the music is as complete as it is cacophonous.

Maybe, Bo thinks as he checks the rearview mirror and hears Luke's laughed out instruction to get a move on, it's the sound of his brain finally working out that dilemma that's been hounding him since early October. He reckons he finally knows what he has to do.


	13. Chapter 13

"Get me another one, would you, Luke?" Another beer or another girl is left up to his imagination. Then again, Bo's doing just fine at collecting girls all on his own, so it must be a beer that Luke is meant to fetch for him.

Which is no problem, really, he was headed for the bar anyway. More or less, he reckons it wouldn't have been any time at all before one of them had to go, and Bo's already on his way over to the tiny clearing that's jokingly referred to as a dance floor with Penny or Patty – one of the Roberts twins – while the other one looks on in open jealousy. Not that she should bother; Bo'll be back for her in a minute. Or hell, she should just go up there and join her sister. Bo's shameless enough to dance with two girls at once.

The Boar's Nest is whipped up into a wild frenzy for a Monday night, but then again, it's not every week that homegrown, celebrated NASCAR driver Bo Duke makes an appearance in this little backwater roadhouse. And gossip being the larger part of what people do for fun in these parts, it's no surprise that every girl of marriageable age (and quite a few that ought to have been married some decades back) has heard about this rare appearance and made their way to the Boar's Nest. All accidental and casual-like, except they're all in skirts short and tight enough that Rosco ought to arrest them for indecent exposure. If he wasn't stuck in his own corner, pouting from Boss's tongue lashing about the way his cruiser had to get dragged back to town this afternoon on the back of Cooter's wrecker.

Daisy's behind the bar when Luke makes his way through the throng of bodies to get up there. Not that she works here or anything, but the crowd's too big for the usual Monday night staff of one bartender and one waitress, and Martha Jean never has been nearly as good at making her way through a maze of half-drunk dancers as Daisy is anyway. Boss didn't even have to ask, just had to widen his eyes and let his lower lip pop out in childish dismay at the unbelievable lack of organization behind the bar (and the slowness of his own meal getting delivered to him) and his girl cousin tied on one of those aprons stained with years of spilt beer and put herself to work. Luke figures she'll be written back into her old schedule come tomorrow, and wiggling back into her old shorts, too. Those jeans just don't bring in the same tips.

"Give me two," he mumbles to her when he gets there. Holds up two fingers because there's no way she can hear him over the din of girl-squeals. Bo must've tossed his hair back or something, maybe smiled. It doesn't take much to get Hazzard's sweethearts falling over each other and drooling in anticipation of their turn to spend a few moments with him.

The look Daisy gives him now is just as difficult to deal with as that other look she'd been giving him for weeks. Silently angry with him up until tonight, when what he gets is more like unspoken pity.

"Please," he adds, wiggling those fingers in the air so she'll stop gawking and get moving. She nods.

He turns around a rests his elbows on the bar while he waits for her to decide whether she's going to serve him or not. Watches the crowd just to keep his eyes busy. It's amazing how much denim there is squeezed tight into chairs and aisles and the dance floor, all of it rubbing together and making the place far too warm for his liking.

But it's just one night. One chance for Bo to say his hellos and goodbyes to all of Hazzard like he didn't get to when he went off to NASCAR the first time. It's only fair to let him enjoy himself and anyway, Luke couldn't stop him if he wanted to. Bo's never done a single thing he didn't want to.

Jesse's at the table furthest from the bar, pushing checkers around a board with his old buddy, Sunshine. It can't be a real game when Luke can see from here that at least two of the red ones are littering the floor along with about half a bowl of popcorn. Not that it matters, when Jesse's too busy watching Bo out there playing on the dance floor and smiling fondly at memories of days gone by to pay much attention to what's happening on the table in front of him. Luke considers going over there and taking a seat in the one empty chair at their table – might be the only one in the whole bar – on the pretense of helping his uncle win a game that's not even real, and right about then there's the feeling of icy wetness against his elbow. He turns around too quickly, almost tips the mug over but Daisy grabs hold to steady it and smirks at him. Her reflexes are as good as ever and his are a mess, at least when his mind is not on the drinks he ordered.

"You still got a tab here?" Daisy hollers and hands him the second mug all careful-like so he won't drop it, still making pity-eyes at him.

Sure, yeah, he's got a tab. Or will after tonight, he supposes. He might have had one all along, but he can't be real sure. His visits here have been mighty few since Bo left and even fewer once he started seeing Hannah. The girl had a secret love for junk food but no particular fondness for watered down beer, so even if all of Hazzard spent their Friday paychecks on half-beef hotdogs and sudsy beer at the Boar's Nest, Hazzard's most-gossiped-about couple were not often to be found there.

Tab or no tab, he nods at Daisy as thanks for the beer and heads out through the treacherous maze of tables, his boot soles sticking to the floor where previous travelers of this same path have not been entirely successful. Like Martha Jean, who seems to have retreated into the kitchen at some point and not bothered to return.

"Bo," he calls, half in warning because he's gotten close to the gyrations that pass for dancing in this place. His own beer is kept reasonably protected by its proximity to his chest but Bo's is out there in his hand, inviting all kinds of danger. (If he was a good cousin, he'd be protecting both of them. If Bo was a good cousin, he'd stop making eyes at all the girls around him long enough to come and get the beer he ordered.)

"Inaminute," Bo answers, winded beyond the point where he can separate his words. He's got some dark-haired, skinny girl with big teeth jutting out of her smile at the end of his arm, and he's getting ready to pull in close to his chest. No one Luke knows, got to be from out of town. Might not be of age, either.

Luke shakes his head and takes the beer over the Jesse's table, puts it down next to the checkerboard and pulls the lone chair away from the table. Turns it backward and settles into it, focusing his full attention on the game in front of him. He confirms his hunch that the game is not real; Jesse's got a black checker at Sunshine's edge of the board that hasn't ever been kinged, and no one's complaining about it. Jesse's thumping his meaty palms on his knees to the music and Sunshine's eyes are at half mast like he might just as happily fall asleep.

"Good game?" Luke asks, watching Sunshine jump even though his words couldn't have been half as loud as the music from the jukebox. Gets glared at for waking a man up in the middle of a good snooze, then a shrug of skinny shoulders under old suspenders. Apparently the game is so-so and Sunshine would like to go back to his highly important nap now. Which is a shame, since Luke would rather watch a game of checkers than watch Bo work the room. The man has learned a few things while he was away and not all of them have to do with driving.

"Yee-haw," bounces across the open space as punctuation to that thought.

"Why ain't you out there dancing, Luke?" Sunshine asks and it really is a shame that Luke didn't just leave him to sleep.

"He ain't a dancer," Jesse answers back for him, which isn't exactly true. He's perfectly capable of dancing under the right circumstances. When there's someone he really wants to dance with and there's no one here like that tonight. Not that Bo notices the lack of good dancing partners, what with how he's dancing with the whole room. "But ain't it nice to see Bo having so much fun?" Yeah, it's lovely.

"You want to play?" he asks Jesse, his finger pointing around the checkerboard to make his question clear. He gets frowned at – apparently this here game with Sunshine isn't over. Either that or watching Bo dance is kind of like going to the movies and he's supposed to hush up and pay rapt attention. Either way, Jesse does not want to play.

So Luke turns to the beer, drinks down about half of what's in his mug. Gets another frown from Uncle Jesse for that, but he can't say he cares. It's more foam than alcohol anyway and the old man ought to know it. Looks away from that silent scolding to catch Enos' eye, nods in greeting. The shoulder he gets is not so much cold as mildly chilly – a pout on Enos' face for how he was tricked into tripping up his own cruiser this afternoon and Luke figures that Bo needs to get his share of that look, too, like he's gotten his share of the girls. But since he's on his own, Luke just smirks his sorrow over the whole affair and Enos almost smiles back at him and makes his way toward the bar and Daisy. If the girl can ever get herself properly divorced, she and Enos might finally be a match writ in the stars – the boy who ran off to his dream job and found out wasn't much of anything worth having, and the girl who chased her heart out after a damn fool man that wasn't worth anything at all.

He's far too busy not looking at Bo, which is why he gets surprised when a flash of fleshy pink comes into his line of sight, followed by a short whistle.

"You all right Lukas?" Bo asks, pulling his hand back and using it to lift the mug of beer he ordered earlier. Good thing, too, because somewhere in there Luke drained the rest of what was in his own mug and probably would have gone for Bo's next.

"Fine," he grumbles back, with some intent to add to it. Maybe to ask Bo if he's about done for the night or maybe just to say that he wants to head home and tell his cousin to bring Jesse whenever he gets around to following. Never makes it there.

"You Bo Duke?" He's gotten out of practice or he was too focused on the game of checkers that wasn't. Either way, trouble has just walked right up to Bo and all but introduced itself, and he never saw it coming.

Bo still doesn't see it. He turns on that NASCAR-charming smile, the same one he uses to sell motor oil in those print ads in car magazines.

"Yes, sir," he answers with full cheer, probably getting ready to extend his hand and shake because Dukes are nothing if not friendly folk. And being a famous NASCAR driver doesn't change that any.

But this right here is a heavyset man with more beard than face, bulk around his shoulders and an ugly blue vest halfway covering up a dirty shirt. Loose jeans and hiking boots that may or may not have a steel toe, and simply put, this is a stranger to Hazzard. Bo may remember how to be proud of being a Duke, but he's clearly forgotten than outsiders don't care for that pride and are perfectly willing to punch it right in the face.

Or try, anyway. Luke sees it coming even if Bo doesn't and stands up just enough to shove Bo a short distance so that his smiling, clueless face doesn't get busted. Slow-moving, meaty fist glances off his shoulder instead.

The guy is bigger than Luke. Not so much taller as denser, like a defensive tackle when Luke's always been more of a wide receiver. Never mind, he squares himself in front of the stranger.

"What the hell was that about?" Bo complains. No telling who the question is directed at, Luke for shoving him or the other guy for trying to hit him. Somewhere the music dims or the voices around them get louder. Boss is blustering in the background, and Luke figures that Rosco's trying to blend in with the walls even if he's dressed head to toe in the blue tones of a lawman's uniform.

"You dance with Judy?" the big guy asks.

Bo shrugs; one of the dozen or so girls that he's flirted with in the last half hour might or might not have been named Judy. Which is the wrong answer as far as Judy's boyfriend is concerned.

"She's with me," the big guy points out, though there is no girl anywhere close enough for him to make an easy claim on. Bo shrugs again, which only goes to prove that a few years at NASCAR has not made him any less blonde. Or maybe that he wants to get hit.

Daisy pushes her way through the crowd – the local folks hanging back a bit because they know what's coming and then closer there are a couple of unfamiliar men who've got the be the big guy's friends – and right up next to Bo. She's shouting something perfectly logical about how there's no need for violence, and she's getting totally ignored. The stranger's heavy body does that slow wind up again and somehow Bo manages to look surprised when that meaty fist makes its way into his face. Daisy stumbles, Bo falls, and Luke feels the muscles in his shoulders and back tense up even as his mind relaxes. This is a routine so old he could do it in his sleep.

He hits the fool. Not too hard, not half as hard as he could have, though his hand has a few complaints about how the guy is not as soft or puffy as he looks. Luke shakes it out as the idiot stumbles around for a few steps, and spares a look to his right to see Bo finding his feet while Daisy's being pulled back out of the way by their uncle. Her eyes flash all manner of danger, if only she could get her hands on the guy. It wouldn't be pretty all around, but Luke can understand the powerful desire in the intensity of her look. There's nothing like a good fistfight to take the edge off of heartbreak and other relationship maladies.

White hot pain when his cheek mashes against his teeth, his vision goes blurry with tears of pain. Sharp cracking sound of his leg smacking into the table when his balance gets lost. He blinks to clear his vision, to see that there's heavy-set man in denim overalls and a dirty baseball cap standing over him. Meanwhile, Bo is getting ready to hit Judy's purported boyfriend (and Judy, whoever she might have been, is probably long gone from this place), which is just fine because all of the big guy's friends have decided to join in the fight. There's a total of four of them against two Duke boys in this little brawl, and that's just about even odds.

* * *

Bo licks at the split in his lip, Luke shakes his head at him. That familiar I'm-older-than-you-and-I-know-better smirk on his face silently announcing that Luke doesn't stand ready to listen to Bo complaining about how it still hurts if he's going to keep messing with it like that. Bo mimics his smirk back at him, feels the pull on his lip and wonders again why they're here.

Last night was—well, he has to admit that he doesn't quite know what that was about, either. Other than some kind of trip through nostalgia that he'd just as soon have never taken. The girls were all right, mostly. Fun to dance with, but some of them were too pushy and apparently at least one of them belonged to another man in the bar. Bo still has no idea who Judy was, but the hairy jerk in the ugly clothes has left a calling card on Luke's cheek. Just under the bone, almost looks like a smudge of dirt, except for how it's kind of blue in the center. It's got to hurt, but Luke'll take a hundred more punches before he'll admit that.

It's quiet out here, away from the morning farm routine that Bo didn't get time to relearn. Two days back in Hazzard and all he got was a fat lip for his efforts. And a few good farm meals that ought to help put on those five pounds Butch wants him to gain, but he's got to go back now. To Mooresville, to train and practice and attend team meetings because there's still one more race in this season.

He should be halfway through Chickasaw right now, well on his way to passing by Atlanta and picking up the interstate north to the Carolinas. Instead, he's standing on the side of a dirt road just south of the Hazzard County line, licking at the sore spot on his lip.

He let himself be gorged by one of Daisy's breakfasts, sat for longer than he should have, listening to his uncle's stern and oddly proud scolding for their behavior last night, patted his girl cousin's hand when she huffed about him leaving again. Looked at the stove and the refrigerator, the dirty pans all piled up next to the sink like he was memorizing the whole thing, then announced that he had to go if he was going to make the team meeting this afternoon. And making it would be a good thing, if he didn't want to get a lecture from Chief Meade as a bookend to the one he'd already gotten from Jesse. Luke had asked to borrow the pickup and had not only gotten permission, but what looked like a smile of blessing. Quite an accomplishment for a man with a newly bruised cheek and no real good explanation for jumping into the middle of the fight that had caused it.

So Luke has followed him out here and both of them know exactly where the line is that Luke can't cross (and Boss briefly threatened to revoke Bo's probation last night but everyone knew he wouldn't when he's got plans to sell tickets to some kind of Bo-Duke-NASCAR exhibit in that moldy old room at the back of the courthouse that he's started calling a museum). Muscle memory pulled the General to a stop in this little copse of trees and Luke followed suit in the pickup. It's not cold where they're standing, but it's windy and the skies look like they're about to open up enough to just about drown them, and Bo has no idea why they're standing here. None at all.

"Luke?"

But his cousin's staring out past Bo, past the cars, past the county line. Quiet in a way that Bo doesn't like.

"You remember moonshine runs through Chickasaw," Luke says with that smile that only makes it to half of his face. Sarcastic or sad or something other than genuine, anyway. "And how we used to go through Harper's back forty and hop the creek instead of coming across here." Where there's a little bridge made for law-abiding cars, and a low billboard on the other side advertising Charlie's Hotdog Stand, which doesn't exist and never has. It's just a reasonably shadowed spot for Sheriff Little to hide his cruiser in the attempt to catch liquor-toting fools that are dumb enough to take the main road. And he's been known to hide there in wait for Duke boys that might just cross the line in defiance of their parole, but that's not going to happen today. Besides, Big Ed Little's not over there anyway; habit made Bo look before he even pulled over. "You remember that one time Little found us?"

He sure does. They were so young then, too confident of their abilities. Luke was behind the wheel which means it had to have been before the Marines – before Luke got so serious. They'd snorted at the idea of danger and stuck to the road until those red and blue lights blinked angrily in their back window, and from there it was a race to safety. Luke had strung together enough dirt roads to get them into the swamp and the Chickasaw sheriff had been easy to lose on a blind turn. They'd made their way home just about laughing themselves sick until they got to their own porch and ran smack into icy fury of Jesse Duke. Three simple facts he'd pointed out to them: one, they'd already made their delivery and the car was clean of illegal liquor so there was no reason to run in the first place; two, after they crossed over into Hazzard they were as safe as they needed to be and should have quit running right then; and three, no Duke ever left any man stranded anywhere alone without sending help. They'd been turned around and sent right back to rescue the lawman, even if the better part of wisdom should have kept them away from him for a month of Sundays until his temper cooled. Not only that, Jesse had sent them over to Chickasaw the next day with a blackberry pie and profuse apologies. In spite of the fact that there's not a single moment of glory for Dukes in the whole thing, it's one of Bo's fonder memories.

"I remember a lot of things." All of them, even; the good times before he discovered how much fun wrestling with Luke could be, the better times after. All the head-spinning moments since when he has believed that what he wanted and what he can have are two different things. And the moment of clarity that he had out there in Zeke Moore's pasture yesterday, with nothing but green grass in front of him and two Hazzard County sheriff cars behind, he remembers that, too. He looks at the General for a second, steadies himself and raises his gaze to find those too-blue eyes of Luke's looking right back at him. "Luke," he says, maybe a little too loudly, but he's got to talk over the heartbeat in his ears. "What do you want?"

Because, despite what Luke said to him in between a pair of quiet kisses in his living room a couple of weeks back, none of this has ever been up to Bo. Or too much of it has – he's the one who started this mess when they were kids and again when they were older. He's the one who got ideas about more than just rubbing and hand jobs and he's the one who kissed Luke on that day when they were just supposed to be helping Daisy move. He does most of the pushing while Luke only shoves back then blames him for it afterward. And now Luke is acting like he's left it up to Bo again, but he doesn't mean it. He just wants that wiggle room, that out clause. That reason to say he only did it because Bo wanted to.

"What do you want?" Luke echoes back at him.

Bo just shakes his head. "I asked you first." Maybe it's childish, but then again childhood games have strict rules that Luke can't deny. Bo did ask him first.

"Bo." Luke looks away and huffs out a breath. Tucks in his shirt that he just tucked in a minute ago when he got out of the pick up, stares across the county line again. "NASCAR is your dream. You should—you should enjoy it."

"That ain't got nothing to do with what you want, Luke." The trick is to not get riled. To not let Luke distract him or annoy him. He sticks his hands into his back pockets and leans against the dirty door of the pick up like he has no place to be, other than right here.

Luke shrugs back at him. "Except you live up there and I got to stay here."

It's hard, trying not to let Luke get him wound up. Especially this part, where they go over old arguments and circular logic and he might as well be screaming about 'Saint Luke' all over again. Except that led to him believing that he'd lost Luke forever, and he never wants to feel that way again. So he bites his lip – winces against the pain where it's split from brawling in the bar – and waits. Leaves Luke all the silence in the world to fill up with doubts and excuses.

"And besides, there's the farm. And Jesse."

"Luke." He's not going to be able to stand it. Excuse after excuse that he knows just as well as he knows his Miranda rights, could rattle them off by heart right here. But there's no way to listen to them without getting angry. "I want you," he says to do his part, to answer the question Luke asked and he avoided. To demonstrate how easy it is, really, to say it out loud. To be honest like they were taught to be.

And to make it impossible for Luke to say that his impetuosity alone is what got them into this. He wants Luke but he has no intentions of touching him.

"When you're ready to make up your mind instead of making excuses, let me know." He pulls his hands out of his pockets, stands up to his full height and takes the few steps over to the General. Grabs the rear pillar and hops up and into the car in one fluid motion, starts the engine and roars across the invisible border to where they both know Luke cannot follow, without ever looking back.

* * *

Bo is an idiot. A spoiled brat of an idiot.

All the rules between them have been broken. Systematically, one after the other, they worked their way through all of them and there are none left to bind either of them to anything at all.

The racing season is over, ended last Sunday, and more than that it's Thanksgiving. Turkey on the platter; Luke hunted up a big one this year because he figured they'd have a full table.

But there's that empty chair beside him.

Not that Bo ever said he was coming home. Luke figures Jesse must have invited him, same as he does every year. And Bo must've given the same sort of vague answer as in years past because Jesse's looking at that empty chair like he expects it to be full of a an oversized blonde, grabbing at the meal with both hands and talking with his mouth full.

"Luke," Daisy's impatient voice, like she's trying to tell him something important. He looks at her, head tipped, just waiting for this bit of wisdom. "Would you please pass the yams." He lifts his eyebrows at this impressive display of impatience. Worthy of Bo, really. "Well, I already asked you three dang times," she informs him, her hand stretched out, fingers wiggling because he still hasn't lifted up the bowl or pushed it any closer to her plate.

"Just cool it, you two," Jesse scolds, because it wouldn't be Thanksgiving without someone making the old man berate them like unruly children.

Luke passes the yams. And the peas and the cranberries after that because he doesn't need her snapping at him again.

Not that it matters a whole lot. If the way she looks at him gets any dirtier he'll have to go take a shower and then Jesse really will be inserting himself between them. And asking questions that he doesn't want to know the answers to.

And meanwhile Bo is, as usual, escaping scrutiny and punishment. Because he's always been the innocent one that Luke led astray and this time he's not even here, so how could he be causing trouble?

Maybe it just never occurred to him that Bo wouldn't come home. Sure, there are unsettled things between then, questions Bo asked that Luke never got around to answering. And it could be that he should have. Bo might be angry with him or upset, but it's Daisy's first Thanksgiving since L.D. left her, and Jesse—no matter what answers Luke hasn't given him, there's no reason for Bo to be punishing Jesse.

And how does he expect Luke to give him answers if he never comes home?

It's that last thought that makes him ashamed of himself.

"Luke." That's Uncle Jesse. His eyes scan the table; doesn't look like the food has backed up around his plate again. So he looks up at his uncle to see the man's hands folded in front of him. Oh, right. The plates are full and now it's time for prayer. Luke folds his hands and dips his head. "Lord, we thank you for this food and for the chance to be together, to talk and listen to each other and to enjoy each other's presence." A pair of steely eyes looks up from the prayer. Luke lets his head drop a little lower to show that he's really paying attention. Concentrating as hard as he can on grace. "And we ask you to look over our family, including the ones who could not be with us on this day. Guide us all to be more grateful to have each other, and to forgive each other's foibles." Luke hopes Daisy's at the receiving end of Jesse's glare this time. Really, slow-moving yams are nothing to get upset over. Luke would be fine with them never making their way back to his side of the table at all. The goats, though, they might make good use of those yams. "Amen," Jesse asserts. "Now eat."

Yes, sir.

The turkey's good, the stuffing's better. And Bo's somewhere else, probably at some bar, drinking beer and eating popcorn with all the guys who had no better place to go. Laughing at crude jokes, but the happiness doesn't make it to his eyes. It can't, not when he's spending his fourth Thanksgiving in a row alone, without his family.

Luke was waiting for Bo to come home so they could—what, keep having stupid arguments? No wonder his cousin stayed away.

He chews over the small spoonful of yams he was compelled to put on his plate and tells himself that as soon as the traditions are over and Daisy's need to be surrounded by family has passed, he's going into town to get himself a pass out of the state. For as many days as he can wheedle out of the Scrooge in white, and he's going to stay in Mooresville for every single one of them, too.

* * *

Lem picked the shortest strip of worn out tire tread in the annual draw, which means he lost and has to host Thanksgiving. The game's rigged; both Bo and Itchy are always surreptitiously offered the bundle of tread with long pieces already jutting out because they're utter bachelors with rental spaces that are too small to host much of anything bigger than a flea convention.

And Lem might have done a small amount of grumbling at the time, but that's part of the tradition, too. There are only four guys with houses made for parties and there are four holidays a year that the team celebrates together, so at least one party each year gets held at Lem's.

Though right about now, Lem might be sincerely wishing they were all at Chief Meade's this year. He's stuck in the kitchen with Cassie, getting an earful about something or other (the words that keep leaking out through the door are 'pigs in a blanket') while most of the team is gathered around the television set big enough that it must have taken two burly men and a forklift to get in the front door and up onto the sturdy table. Laughing at Lem's domestic woes, but trying to make it sound as though something funny happened in the football game that none of them is paying real close attention to.

Lem and Cassie's little boy, Tanner, has taken up residence on Bo's lap as he sits uncomfortably in a chair that's got a small seat and a low backrest. Probably Cassie's chair but his choices were limited and the alternative would be squeezing himself between Chief Meade and Bubs on the couch, which would be about as much fun as wedging himself into a space between Boss and Lulu Hogg. He may have lost some weight, but he's not that skinny.

Tanner can't be more than four or five – Bo consoles himself that the kid's got to be old enough to be potty trained – but he's hot and squirmy and there's no telling why he's picked Bo to be his special friend. He pops his thumb firmly in his mouth and closes his eyes against any suggestion that there might be a better place for him to sit. It's probably best to keep him where he is for now, anyway. What's going on in the kitchen is getting mighty close to cussing and swearing and spewing words that little boys shouldn't hear.

Besides, Bo has had less pleasant Thanksgivings.

_(The first one wasn't as bad as the second, probably. Back then, he and Don were both rookies vying for a chance to drive the Reed team's second car in some of the bigger races. Thanksgiving was a good time to go over to the motorplex and spend hours behind the wheel, practicing handling the banked turns at different speeds, different angles and just plain getting the feel for a professional track. If it hadn't been compulsory, it had been strongly recommended, and Doug Reed himself had been there to watch over the two of them. It didn't take much to outshine Don, who was far prettier outside a car than in it. The hardest part of the day had been getting used to spending that much time alone; he was used to a co-pilot. He was used to Luke in all his crabby and bossy glory._

_By the time he'd shown Don up in just about every way he could think of, with a brief break in the middle to drink the chocolaty (and chalky) 'power shakes' that were sent up from the gym by Butch, it was well past dark and Bo figured that most of the folks back in Hazzard were long done with their meals and their visiting. Jesse was probably dozing in front of the fire while Daisy did her quiet stitching and Luke—he couldn't imagine what Luke would be doing. Not with Bo and the General gone._

_As to Mooresville, he had no idea what traditions the people here had when it came to eating or visiting and he just plain didn't care. He was tired enough after a day of proving himself that all he wanted was to get home, make a ham sandwich, and lie down in front of the television he'd bought himself a few weeks before._

_That second Thanksgiving away from home, though._

_By then he was just another one of the guys on the team. Nicknames had been long since doled out and his was just plain 'Hazzard' which he was caught between loving and wishing would go away. Don was 'Superman' by then and he puffed out his chest every time it got said out loud, too. The fool had decided he got the name for how fast he drove, but the fact that he'd been relegated to backup driver while Bo got the second car on a steady basis should have put the lie to that. Vanity gave him his nickname – his carefully sculpted body and hair, which were more important to him than driving, and it showed. Lem didn't get a nickname because he was too grown up or too much of a stick in the mud (with a mean little temper that marked him as dangerous to play with), Pedro had long since become Butch and Chief Meade had always been Chief._

_And the holiday party roulette had begun. Itchy collected all the worn out hoses, belts or strips of tread from blown out tires, Chief Meade held them out for selection and whoever got the shortest one had to host._

_Chief himself was left with the short hose that year and everyone who did any kind of work for the team was invited to his house for the feast._

_By then Daisy had moved to Clemmons and was planning her first Thanksgiving as a married woman. Of course, she and L.D. were invited to Hazzard, as was Bo. But L.D. insisted that both the Wednesday before and Friday after Thanksgiving were important days in the tractor sales business, so he couldn't take the time to travel. And Bo figured that the rules between him and Luke negated the invitation he got._

_Which left him with two other invitations to deal with: Daisy's and Chief's. He figured it wouldn't be too wise to go walking away from an event hosted by the man who took care of every one of Bo's needs while he was driving on a track at nearly two hundred miles per hour, but he knew full well that he'd be very, very sorry if he didn't make his way to Daisy's that day._

_Splitting the difference was the best solution he could manage without Luke at his side to scheme up something better. He went to Chief's in the early afternoon and promised Daisy he'd be up at her place by six. Which was more like six-thirty once he got himself free of the turkey that Chief's wife Nancy kept piling on his plate. By the time he made it to Clemmons, Daisy's stuffing was overcooked, her mashed potatoes were cold and L.D. had eaten a mound of potato chips and settled in front of the television with a complete refusal to participate in anything like a family meal. Bo and Daisy sat in her kitchen, smiling at each other over food that neither one of them much wanted to eat, wordlessly reassuring each other that this Thanksgiving was as good as any they'd ever had in Hazzard. Had to use that silent means of communication; saying it out loud would be lying and Dukes weren't allowed to do that._

_It was well past nine when he left the rental house in Clemmons, driving over unfamiliar roads in a cold mist. Going faster than the speed limit about halfway between the two cities when a deer on a suicide mission crossed paths with the General. The car's push bar and hood didn't fare too well, the deer was worse, and Bo ended up calling for a smokey on the C.B. By the time everything was done, he'd been handed a ticket for reckless driving, the General had been hauled off by an unfamiliar tow truck with a uncaring and startlingly tidy driver, and Bo was standing at a Greyhound bus stop waiting for the first bus to come by and take him north to Daisy or south to Mooresville or just about anywhere, when all he wanted was to go home to Hazzard._

_At least it was dark enough that no one passing by could see the redness of his face or wetness of his eyes.)_

"Fuck, no, that ain't no penalty," Dave Mays hollers at the television from his seat on a cedar chest that might just contain toys. Tanner's little brother, Timmy, is supposed to be sleeping in one of the bedrooms, and maybe he is. At least he's not squalling.

"Dave," Bo says, pointing to the kid on his lap. The scout is about to say something in his own defense that might just come out bluer than what he's already said, but Chief nods his agreement with Bo's position and the matter is settled. Whether or not anyone wants him here, there's a child in the room and the language will be curtailed. Even if the kid in question is snuggling up against Bo's chest like he never heard a single thing.

Bo has never really loved kids, never wanted any of his own. Daisy always seemed like a cinch to have them and Jesse would be happy enough with that. Luke—well, Luke likes kids and it's almost too easy to see where he could have convinced himself that marrying Hannah and settling down was a good idea.

"All right," Cassie calls out as she emerges from the kitchen. "We've got your vegetables, we've got your pigs in a blanket, we've got your cheese and crackers." Like a vendor at the track selling peanuts and popcorn. "We've got your beer and wine and coke," she adds, laying a couple of trays on the spindly-legged folding table that's been set up next to the television. Chief stands up to be helpful and otherwise make sure that nothing delectable gets dropped, and Lem follows behind with a number of brown and green bottles. What the guys on the circuit call the good stuff, expensive beer packaged in glass.

But they've never tasted Jesse's moonshine. Which, if tradition follows its normal course, will make its way out from one of the less noticeable crevices in the old farmhouse, somewhere after dark. The fire will be down to coals, a sip of 'shine in everyone's glass and the pressure will be on for each member of the family to come up with something they are grateful for. That part was always easy for him and Jesse; Daisy had to work at it a little and Luke—

No, he's not supposed to be dwelling on Hazzard or Luke. He's waiting _patiently_ for Luke to decide what he wants, for his cousin to choose Bo over any grand ideas he might ever have had of children and sainthood. And until that time he's going to enjoy his Thanksgiving here in Mooresville.

"And," Cassie announces with a special flare and a wink in his general direction. "We've got pizza squares."

The hot, squirming mass in Bo's lap gets a little more serious. Little limbs trying to coordinate themselves enough to get closer to the special treat, and Bo always has been a fool. His hand goes under Tanner's elbow to help, which works out perfectly wonderfully when the kid gets up on one knee and then the other one lands in Bo's lap just where it's destined to be most painful.

The kid's gone and Bo's curling into himself, waiting for the worst of it to pass. But he keeps telling himself that this isn't the worst Thanksgiving he's ever had.


	14. Chapter 14

"Damn it, Bo." And what a rotten ending to a perfectly awful day.

Maudine started it when her colicky ways made a mess of the morning routine. Jesse walking her in slow circles and refusing any help or even coffee, just about biting Daisy's head off when she offered to get Doc Petticord, who is more patient with livestock than he is with humans. Charges more for them, too, and that's why Jesse wasn't in any mood to hear suggestions from anyone. He was going to walk his girl around until she got over it, and that was just what he did.

Which pushed breakfast back to lunchtime.

And made Luke later than he wanted to be in getting downtown to the courthouse. Then it was begging like a schoolboy after a signed permission slip for a chance to leave the jurisdiction. Which should have taken all of three minutes, since it was supposed to have been waiting on Enos' desk for him. Except Enos had gone out to remove the widow Brown's dangerously wandering cow from the middle of Route 36, and while he was out, Rosco had found the envelope marked with Luke's name on it. After all manner of itching and twitching about it, the sheriff had decided that the ever devious Luke Duke had gone off and had it delivered to the courthouse all careful-like, because it contained a bomb. According to Rosco's stuttered and earnest testimony, it had been ticking with all manner of malice toward the courthouse and its occupants. Which was why he had poured what was left of his cold coffee on it, then very carefully, with only two fingers, carried it to the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet.

That, of course, explained the inch of water in the hallway outside the squad room and the man in gray with a plunger in one hand and a wrench in the other threatening to unscrew Boss' head from his neck unless he got paid in cash this time. Rosco, cringing in the corner until he was a good six inches shorter than he should have been, his lips moving in words that only he could understand, was being told that it would come out of his paycheck and Enos, who had come back covered in mud and smelling of cowpats, was apologizing to everyone for everything. Even if none of it was his fault.

Somewhere in between the threats to lock Luke up for causing a public nuisance and bellowing like a branded steer, Boss had managed to sign another pass for him. For six days instead of the original three, because dang Dukes needed to get out of his office and out of his county before they ruined everything.

Which meant he really did have to go back home. He was half planning on it anyway, just to make sure Maudine really was past needing to be worried over, and to say a proper goodbye. To kiss Daisy on the cheek because she'd been more nervous about this trip than even he was. Now he had to explain that he was likely to be gone twice as long and make sure that Jesse had no objections to it.

Which earned him a snicker from Daisy and a raised eyebrow from Jesse since his last two trips out of state didn't even make it through one day, much less six. Luke just hugged and kissed them goodbye, turned around and left the house and all its amused occupants behind.

Off in Daisy's jeep because that was the questionably logical decision that had been made. Luke got the car that was open to the elements to drive up north in last days of November, while Daisy got a nice little loaner sedan from Cooter to drive all eleven miles to the Boar's Nest and her new job (that was suspiciously like the old one, what with her only getting to keep about twenty-five percent of her tips). His too-small denim jacket straining at the buttons and a fine mist of fog that managed to soak through his hair and clothes as he crossed the mountains, but it was all right, because the sun came back when the land leveled out as he drove up the North Carolina piedmont. Between that and the wind, he dried out well enough that his hair could pass for a tumbleweed.

Finally, he'd made it to the Mooresville city limits to discover that every driver in town considered themselves worthy of the NASCAR track (or maybe the demolition derby), but after a reasonably close call with a nervous young mother using both lanes to drive her boxy van, he'd found his way to Bo's apartment complex. Parked the jeep next to the endless rise of concrete stairs (okay, it was only three flights, but he was tired and cold) closest to Bo's entrance and wondered where his cousin had parked the General. Couldn't see him anywhere but went up the steps anyway and knocked on the door. Thought about how glad he was to finally be here, how much he really wanted to see Bo. Almost a week after Thanksgiving and about four hours later than he wanted to get here, but he was finally—

Stuck waiting in the parking lot for his ridiculous cousin to come back from wherever he'd gone. Stupid, maybe, to assume Bo would be exactly where Luke expected to find him, especially when he hadn't called to let him know he was coming. Then again, most of his life, when he's wanted to find Bo, all he's ever had to do is look to his left.

It's full-on dark now that the General's finally sauntering into the lot at the sort of casual pace that probably makes the racer just about as colicky as Maudine. Barely parked next to the jeep and that blonde fuzzy head comes popping out the driver's side.

"Luke?" like it's such a surprise to see him, and maybe it is. Maybe Bo reckoned he'd never come around again or maybe he expected Daisy to be sitting in the jeep. He pulls himself all the way out, sticks the keys in the pocket of his dark, suede coat, and trots around to the driver's side of the jeep to hug him anyway. For a minute, and no longer than that, everything feels right.

Then he finds himself standing next to the General's trunk, being handed a number of plastic bags decorated with snowflakes and fancy script announcing the names of department stores. A long finger points him up the stairs, the trunk slams and Bo follows behind him with his own load.

"Sorry," Bo pants out as they climb. "I was out doing some Christmas shopping for the guys. Every year we have a big party and everyone gets gifts for it," is the offered explanation. "We all chip in for a tree and then we load it up with presents." Mercifully, the steps, the weight of the packages in his arms and shuffling everything around to find his keys, all conspire to put a stop to Bo's talking.

Until they get inside.

"It's a little early to be Christmas shopping, but we're going to have the party on the tenth this year because it's at Chief's house." Details that Luke doesn't care about or understand. "And he's got to go down to Miami for the real Christmas to see his father. Poor guy is so old that he can't travel anymore."

"Bo." He drops the bags he was carrying somewhere on the floor, doesn't notice or care where they land. They make a hell of a noise though. Something clatters in one of them and another rattles. "Enough."

"Luke!" and Bo moves double-quick to check on the precious contents of those bags. Squatting down at Luke's feet and poking around for any broken parts. Breaking things is wasteful, and breaking things that don't belong to you is downright wrong. Luke figures he might get around to caring about that in year or so.

Dark eyes look up at him from beneath fuzzy brows. Hard to tell from that angle whether what Luke's seeing is surprise or anger. "What is your problem?" Anger it is, then.

"You get presents for your friend's father, too? Or maybe his uncle in Alabama or his cousin out in," Luke's arm is gesticulating off at nothing in particular, just working itself up into its own ugly frenzy. "California? How about his girlfriend?" Oh he's been getting into dangerous territory here.

During that marvelous tirade, Bo abandons his fine presents in whatever state of brokenness they might be to find his feet. Looks right at him with his hands set on his hips and his head tipped to the side, just waiting for more of Luke's brilliance. (Too bad he's fresh out.)

"You got a family, Bo." Oh, that one gets a sarcastic tilt to Bo's raised eyebrow. "You ain't got no need to be buying bags and boxes of presents for people you hardly know when you ain't even come home for Thanksgiving." It is, he feels, an unfailingly reasonable argument. Bo's eyebrow mocks that very notion.

"Damn it, Bo." That perfectly rotten ending to that perfectly lousy day that has built right up to this moment. Where everything he figures he came here to do has been blown to the winds.

"So, let me get this straight," Bo starts and Luke doesn't even want to hear one more damn word.

"It's one thing," he butts right in, "if you figure you got to punish me for not giving you an answer you figure you wanted." His selfish cousin demanding some kind of declaration on the side of the damn road, right next to a border that Bo can meander back and forth over any damn time he wants to, but Luke has to go and get the permission of the crooked county commissioner and hope his incompetent sheriff doesn't flush that permission down the toilet if he wants to cross. "But you ain't got no reason to go punishing Jesse and Daisy. Jesse's old, Bo," there, now that sardonic twist is coming off of Bo's face and his chest is puffing out. "And Daisy's just lost her—"

"I know what Daisy's lost," Bo snaps right back at him and it's satisfying, really. To see the red splotches spreading across his cheeks and that index finger coming to a point directed right at his chest. "It was me she came to when she needed help. And ain't it funny how you're so worried about Jesse now. He ain't but three years older than he was when you made them rules about how I couldn't come home for more than a few hours at a time, Luke. I didn't see you worrying none about him last year or the one before."

"And you were so good about following them rules, because you're such a law-abiding soul," Luke sneers back at him. "You ain't never broke a rule once, right?" He waves his hand through the air in dismissal of that notion, looks at the worn blue carpet on the floor. Tells himself that he's trying to get control of his temper, but he can't swear it's true. By the time he's looking at Bo's face again, his cousin's eyes are squinted down. But he's not full-on ticked off yet; his face will be a lot more contorted when he gets there. "You ain't never done a single thing you didn't want to, Bo Duke. You didn't have to follow them rules."

Apparently that's funny. Interesting, because Luke doesn't exactly feel like laughing. But Bo gets a big old smile on his face that's nothing but teeth. The pointing finger has been retracted and turned into a fist held resolutely at the ready. "What was I supposed to do, Luke?" gets asked in an incredulous chuckle. A step toward him, close enough that Luke has to look up to maintain eye contact and that's just plain annoying. Tipping his head back and keeping his hands on his hips because—"You didn't want me home." Because Bo's got to shove him first. It's how the rhythm goes. Bo shoves, Luke shoves back until someone loses their balance and ends up pinned to the wall and then the kissing starts—

Sex follows, and it's good. Gets better every time they do it, really. Learning each other's bodies like they never dared to as kids and it would be fine if sex was the only thing between them, but it's not. There's that other thing that always follows, the guilt and anger, the reasons it was all a bad idea.

It used to work out well enough. They'd ignore each other for a day or two, pretend nothing happened and he'd make all those promises to himself about how it would never happen again. Then he'd let himself be drawn out to some private part of their property and the shoving would start all over again.

Somewhere along the line they grew up and hand jobs turned into real sex, and a couple of days of ignoring each other turned into Bo moving away. The last time they followed this same routine he figured he'd lost Bo for good and then Daisy came home yelling at him about how bad off Bo was and – they're damn fools.

He can't do it. Not again, not even one more time. He'd rather walk out of here right now than to end up having sex on Bo's couch or bed or floor, then driving home alone in the cold with no reasonable expectation of ever getting it right. One of these times they won't find their way back to each other.

He takes a step back out of shoving range.

* * *

Luke's eyes, that's what does it. Not the way he's uncurling those fingers from where they've been gripping into his own hip bones, not the step away or the his mouth closing, cutting off whatever it is that he was getting ready to say. It's those eyes that lose focus, no longer really seeing him but looking through him. Dismissing him and his silly feelings that don't matter anyway.

"Besides," he hollers a little louder. The neighbors, no doubt, can hear his every word. Fortunately, he isn't home enough to know any of the ones he shares walls with. "You're the one who made the rules." Luke, on the other hand, is playing at being deaf. "If you was so worried about Jesse you wouldn't have made them in the first place. Or you would have said I could come home for holidays or—" It's fairly ridiculous, really. He's not even sure what he's saying anymore, he's just filling the space where Luke should have interrupted him by now. "You could have gone away so I could come home." And it's not even working, because Luke's taken another step back like maybe he thinks he's going to run out of here again. Disappear back to Hazzard where he's safe with his stupid rules that keep Bo away. "You could have gone to visit Hannah's folks," ought to get a response, if only to tell him to leave the girl out of it. "And given me a chance to come and see Jesse." But it doesn't. "Damn it, Luke!"

His eyes hurt, his throat is worse.

"I didn't come here to fight with you, Bo." It's quiet, that kind of quiet that gets inside Bo and steals away all his warmth.

"Well what the hell did you come for then?" compensates by being too loud, too accusatory. Like thunder that masks the whistle of a killing wind.

Luke's eyes are still distant, his mouth is open, stumbling over words that won't come. He might as well be facing down Rosco's gun when he knows he's caught and trying to think of anything to say to stay out of jail. In a second his hands are going to come up in that false surrender. (For one absurd moment he pictures himself trying to cuff and stuff Luke. It'd never work; Bo would never fall for the pull-the-hat-over-the-eyes trick, but Luke could hit him outright in a way that he'd never punch a relatively feeble man like Rosco. Then he'd run off and jump into the General, prove all over again why it is that Duke boys don't need keys to start a car, and be gone.) Luke's lips press into each other, his eyebrows lower and he squints a bit – that look he gets when the world is just too stubborn to go along with one of his plans. It would be funny if he weren't so serious about it.

Then he shakes his head, looks at the ugly carpet on the floor for a few seconds before his eyes come up to meet Bo's. He offers up a shrug that only makes it to one shoulder, lets out a huff of air. _Don't ask me questions with sincere answers_ , his gestures say _. I ain't got no patience for that kind of honesty._

It's nothing at all, and then it's something. Almost too much because Luke might just as well have said _I came here because I love you._

Bo grabs him around the neck and yanks. Takes a second because Luke's getting ready to back away again, stumble-step while he gets the motion right and they're kissing. It's no more gentle than if they'd shoved each other first, still a fight of a kiss that makes his lips feel bruised right from the start. Hard teeth, tightness to their lips and something like a growl in Luke's throat. Not touching anywhere except their lips and his hand tangled in the rough denim collar of Luke's jacket. Might as well be punching each other with their mouths, then Luke's fingers find his waist under the hem of his open jacket. Gripping warmly then sliding to the small of his back and pulling him closer. Firm, confident touch and Bo knows, suddenly, why Luke has never had trouble getting girls. He may not be quite so pretty, but he's got a way of touching that leaves a person feeling nimble and lithe, like there's no place but here that they were ever meant to be.

Hot. Driving around in the General with the windows down was cold enough to merit his jacket, but his apartment's plenty warm and the way their bodies are now touching from their hips to their lips is hot.

His fingers knot into Luke's hair, curls tangling under his fingers, and he tips his head for a better angle on the kiss. Gets rewarded with a closer press of bodies, a grumble that might have been a thank you in another place and time. Right here and now it makes him put his free arm around Luke, low at his waist, and pull them that much tighter together.

But it's hot. He really ought to do something about that.

"Bo," Luke mumbles out somewhere in the kiss. Slightly annoyed sound to it and there's been plenty enough of that already and not nearly enough of this, so Bo kisses him harder, tongue exploring every bit of his mouth, even the corner that has some remnant flavor of rest-stop coffee in it. "Bo," Luke tries again, but he's got no patience at all for any of that.

Luke's hand finds its way out of his jacket and comes up to his shoulder. Other one on the other shoulder and firm pressure there. Bo doesn't put any serious worry into that, just focuses on the kiss and the feeling of muscles through the thickness of Luke's jacket.

And feels a drop of sweat sliding out of his hair and down his back. It's hot.

More pressure on his shoulders that's downright persistent. Like it's trying to get him to sit down when they're in the middle of the floor with the nearest chair about three steps away. And even if he did sit in it, where would Luke end up? In his lap? Not only would that be rather uncomfortable, it's also incredibly unlikely. The couch isn't all that far away and the bed might be a good idea, too, but Luke's not exactly moving him toward either and he's content to keep standing right where they are, close together and kissing.

Which gets a quick response, Luke's hands grabbing him by the jaw, a wide finger accidentally grazing roughly across his ear, then Luke forcibly tipping his head until it's awkwardly sideways.

Changes the angle, Luke's head no longer tilted back and suddenly Bo's not in control of the kiss. Likes it and doesn't – he's never been on this side of a kiss, taking more than giving. Usually he and Luke are pretty even, but this kiss seems to see-saw between them and—

It's just too damned hot.

The kiss – Luke can have that, can take it any direction that he wants for now. Bo's hand has been exploring the muscles of his back long enough. The other one comes out of Luke's hair, finally, and joins its companion below, each with a handful of firm backside, pulling their hips together. Luke quits kissing him long enough to suck in a stuttered breath.

But it's too damned hot. And there's the notable bulk of jeans between his fingers and Luke's skin.

Luke's breath catches in his throat, his thumbs stroke over Bo's cheeks until they hit sideburn, then go back toward his lips. Some kind of scar or roughness on the right one, but Luke's always getting little nicks and cuts from building fences and otherwise tending to their own house and the neighbors' too.

"Luke," he says. Because it's hot and even if he doesn't want to quit what they're doing, he really would like there to be no clothing between them. They just need easier-to-shuck clothing because buttons and zippers take too much work.

"Bed?" Luke suggests, letting go of his face so the width of his hands can drag down Bo's chest inside his open jacket. Trails of fire follow his fingertips.

Bo doesn't bother to answer, just lets go of Luke's backside, grabs his hand instead and starts to pull him toward the bedroom, yanking at his jacket with the other hand as he goes. It's not working too well and eventually they're going to have to get serious about removing their clothes, but that can wait until they're behind his closed bedroom door.

If, that is, he can get Luke there. Resistance; Luke pulls back against his hand.

"You got anything?"

What?

Luke makes a crude gesture with his hand. Something slippery, is what he means.

"Yeah, in the bedroom." He leaves out the part about how the hand cream they used last time has been stashed on his night table ever since the last night Luke spent here, like some kind of a memory that he never wanted to let get too far away from him. "Come on," is all he says as he tugs on Luke's hand again.

* * *

Falling asleep after holding onto Bo with both hands and pressing in, feeling the heat and tightness around him, hearing his name groaned out, tasting coppery blood upon biting his own lip, the colors behind his eyes, Bo's mewl at the end and wrapping his arms tight around him—well falling asleep is a natural consequence.

Waking up is sobering in the same way that it always has been. Thick darkness pierced only by the orange light of a digital clock flashing nonsense lines and dashes that have nothing to do with the actual time, heat and sweat and he's caught so tight in Bo's arms that he can't move.

They do what comes before the sleep well enough. Just as close to wrestling as it was when they were nothing more than overeager teenagers, rough and tumble and glorious energy spent.

It's the after that they always manage to make a mess of. This moment now, in between the good and the way it's doomed to go bad, is an uncomfortable time. No place to go when Bo's got both arms wrapped around him and one leg draped over both of his. Too hot to sleep, no chores waiting to be done, nothing to distract him from his thoughts of what's coming. The fight he and Bo are destined to have because nothing, really, has changed. When the sun comes up, the world is still going to be out there, full of Jesse and Daisy and Boss Hogg and everyone else who doesn't want to know what the Duke boys get up to when no one else is looking. And they haven't ever come to anything like an agreement about how to handle that.

_(Hannah lent him the reputation of being a fine and upstanding gentleman. She certainly thought he was, and what he couldn't tell her or anyone else was that it was just her glow reflecting off him. She was a good girl on her best behavior and he was just—_

_Minimally interested._

_There was nothing wrong with her. She was cute in her own way, with enough meat on her bones to round out all the right parts of her. Smart and plenty self-sufficient, didn't have a daddy waiting with a rifle full of rock salt pellets if Luke brought her home late. No little girl lost, no hungry little virgin wanting him to overwhelm her and make her swoon. She wasn't raised with Hazzard's tales of generations of Duke boys and their wanton ways, she didn't have any interest in becoming part of the legend._

_He could do all the gallant things for her without too much thought. Opening doors, taking her arm, offering his jacket. (When he thought to carry one – she was always cold and he was usually plenty warm but eventually he took to wearing his jacket just so he could offer it to her.) She could hold up her end of a conversation, even if it was mostly about what clever things the kids in the kindergarten class at the Hazzard School had to say this week. She had a nice smile and a pleasantly laid-back way about her when it came to physical affection._

_Then again, she was respectable, but she wasn't a nun or otherwise opposed to sex before marriage. And eventually the day came where kisses and fingers grazing across tender parts of her within the tight confines of the pickup were not enough, and he got invited up to her room in the boarding house. Which was on the second floor with all the other girls, the men living downstairs in some sort of antiquated notion of segregation. Back in the day of their fathers, no man was supposed to come up past the first landing on the staircase, but that rule got lost somewhere around the time of go-go boots and mini-skirts. Luke made his first trip up the stairs while still in high school and he'd been back a number of times in those years when he and Bo did their best to get with every girl in the county. In fact, Hannah's room at the north end, with the camp stove by the entry and the cracked mirror over the tiny sink, used to belong to Mary Lee. Or Beth Ann, hard to remember. Hard to care._

_She'd made the space homey enough, in her slightly untidy way. Patterned curtains softening the windows, a writing desk in one corner, covered in books and pencils and scraps of paper with scrawled out notes on them.  Scarves and hats and even a brightly colored cape hanging on hooks drilled into her closet door. Shoes in pairs and singles here and there like she'd gotten in the door then just couldn't bear to wear them for another minute, and a soft, flannel sheet hung on a piece of clothesline to separate the bed from the rest of the room._

_Luke might have been expecting to be offered a cup of coffee and a place to sit, a little conversation while cuddling on the fat loveseat that was crammed awkwardly into the tight nook alongside the door. Maybe some kissing and light petting, but it seemed that Hannah had other designs on his time. Nervous hands gripped the open collar of his shirt and pulled him awkwardly close, her eyes darting from one of his to the other like she was trying to read his thoughts. He kissed her just for being so cute about it, wrapped an arm around her to make the halfway annoying trembling stop._

_He knew what she wanted; it was right there in the way she snaked her fingers up to play with those ticklish hairs at the nape of his neck and opened her mouth to deepen the kiss. What he was less sure about was what he wanted._

_His body knew well enough that it had been denied for quite some time, so he let it take over for him, even as his brain rattled over thoughts of other times he'd been in this house, what it had meant to him at the time and whether he had any regrets about any of them. Thought about the hot sun and the cold pond, soft grasses, private spaces he'd found with Bo and that vulnerable little noise he always made just when they got to the best part._

_Found himself carefully sitting on Hannah's bed that seemed too small and breakable. The girl settling next to him and resting her hand on his shoulder as they started kissing again. Little tugs at his shirt that might have been a request for him to take it off or just to come closer._

_He couldn't quite come up with an exact number of his shirts that Bo had torn over the course of their years of wrestling together, but Daisy might have been able to. Or not, there were a few that he hid in the bottom of a garbage pail because he figured they were beyond repair. Still, there had been a span of a few months in there where he'd given some serious consideration to walking around shirtless because if Bo tore one more seam, their girl cousin was going to get around to asking some pretty uncomfortable questions._

_He slid his hand up under the thickness of Hannah's turtleneck shirt just to move things along. Ran his palm across the softness of her belly and she sucked in a little extra air at that. Looked up at him and stroked her soft fingers across his cheek, up toward his ear and started playing with the ends of his hair again. Light little touches that weren't leading anywhere._

_He could remember more than a couple of times when he figured that Bo might just leave him with a bald patch or two, considering the way his long fingers always managed to catch in Luke's hair. Sometimes, just before he came, Bo would knot his hand in the sweaty mess of curls at the back of Luke's head and then pull just as he arched up. Afterward he would offer up little kisses of apology, his hands smoothing over the tender skin of Luke's scalp. If he had to lose his hair someday, he figured it might just be okay, so long as that was how it happened._

_Lying down with Hannah was a cautious thing, after what felt like hours of just touching, kissing, pulling off bits of clothing at a snail's pace. Careful of his weight and how much of it he let her bear, moving slow and easy because whatever else happened on that night, he did not want to hurt her._

_Not like the times he or Bo had taken each other down hard enough to leave marks. That sudden, heart-stopping second of smacking into the dirt and grass and stones and roots and then sucking in that sweet gasp of air that meant everything would be all right after all. A laugh, because they were so very stupid but it was fun to shove at each other like that, to test their strength and their breaking points, to turn play into sex and then back into play all over again._

_For all that the foreplay with Hannah had stretched out like that gooey taffy Aunt Lavinia used to make when he was young, the sex itself moved quickly. His body finally overruling his brain for what it wanted, what it would take since it had been so graciously offered. Afterward, Hannah was content as a kitten, curled up against him with her fingers tickling at parts of him again. Spent and ready to sleep, and all Luke wanted was to get away from her. From the bed, the house, from everything and everyone. Because he felt empty, he felt lonely and at least if he could be out in the swamp where nobody else ever really dared to go, it would make sense to feel that way._

_But Hannah wrapped an arm around him to keep him right where he was, kissed him sleepily. He closed his eyes and promised himself that it wouldn't always be like this. That being with Hannah – and sex with Hannah – would get better, because it had to. Because he couldn't stand to feel like this forever.)_

"Luke," sleep-mumbled from his side. A complaint and a request all rolled up into one little syllable. A little shift and a hand rubbing at his back.

 _What's eating at you, Luke?_ A question from a different time and place, back when it didn't carry so much weight. When his biggest worry was getting framed for robbing the bank and spending ten years in prison.

He hushes Bo. It's too early for that question, for all the heated words that are doomed to follow after it.

"Luke," is muffled by the pillow that Bo's face is half buried in. A little tug of those long arms, as if the two of them could be any closer together, a kiss that mostly misses his lips and yet manages to taste like stale breath all the same. "Quit thinking, you idiot, and go to sleep."

Well. Who is he to argue with such brilliant advice?


	15. Chapter 15

When he wakes up after an endless dream of wandering a series of hallways in search of a bathroom that he never is able to find, he fully expects to be alone. He would swear Luke left him in the night. But the pale yellow glow of artificial light peeking around the edges of his blinds reveals a tuft of dark hair sticking out from the top of the sheet that's otherwise wrapped around Luke like a mummy. Not really gone, just must have rolled away from him at some point while he slept, though he doesn't remember his sleep being deep enough for that to happen without him knowing.

Still dark enough to call it night, but that dream haunted him for a reason and like it or not, he's got to get up. Cold outside the blankets, but it's not too bad. The walls here are solid concrete and the windows fit solidly into the frames. Not like the farmhouse they were raised in, where winter wouldn't bother to knock, she'd just come right in and make herself at home.

Bare feet on carpeted floor, took him forever to get used to that after a lifetime of cold, worn-down wood. Stumbling the five steps or so to the door and out without waking Luke. Which is odd; Luke rarely sleeps deeply and Bo would still swear that his cousin was restless last night.

Out into the open space of his living room, dining room and kitchen all rolled up into one, and he kicks something. Soft, fortunately, so he doesn't have to start hopping around and whimpering about his poor toes. Squints down into the soupy, artificial light that comes through his bay window from the parking lot, and he can make out a duffle bag. Dull gray or green, either way it's not his. Got to be Luke's and it's funny, but Bo doesn't remember him bringing that in last night.

He makes it to the bathroom, closes the door when he doesn't usually bother, but he's got a guest. Sort of, it's just Luke and they've shared a bathroom before – hell, they've shared more than that but – he closes it anyway. Flips up the toilet seat that he can't remember putting down and sighs as the pressure in his bladder gets relieved. Really should have gone before he went to sleep, but he was too busy holding onto Luke then. Kissing and petting and letting the sweat dry on their skin.

Heading back across his apartment naked – really doesn't make any sense at all that he closed the bathroom door – seeing something on that rickety table that he half-jokingly thinks of defining his dining room. Detours off his planned path to get a closer look at it in the thin light; it's got an odd, angular shape. He reaches out a hand to find that it's an open box. Plain donuts inside that look like they came from a roadside stop, which means Luke did leave him sometime in the night, because he knows these weren't here before. The two of them hit the bed without eating and by now he's hungry enough to grab one and stuff it in his mouth, even if it's a boring old man's doughnut, not coated in chocolate or even dusted with sugar.

Swallows hard, considers milk and decides that he'd rather get back to the warmth of his covers and more than that, the warmth of Luke. Who left the bed for quite a bit longer than Bo would have thought possible, when his last memory was of holding on to him with both arms. But he came back, and that's the important thing. It's more, maybe, than Luke's ever done before.

Tiptoeing over to his bedroom and through the door, crawling into the bed and lying down to find that his efforts were wasted. Luke's eyes, open and reflecting the light from the broken clock at the other side of the room, staring at him, and it's strange.

Bo snuggles closer to him and drops an arm across his waist.

"What time is it?" he gets asked in a voice that's far too awake for his liking.

"Don't know," he says back, and lets his cold feet rest against the warmth of Luke's shins. Half expects to get pushed away, but he doesn't. Luke's too busy being eerily still. "Not morning yet."

"Bo," Luke says and it sounds regretful. Not the angry regret that he's used to, either. Something more like sadness.

Bo, sighs, pulls himself closer. Has the sense that he's done this before. Rolls them over so half his weight rests on Luke, as if that little will be enough to hold his cousin there. Doesn't get fought against, so he figures he must not be lying too heavily across him, or otherwise being annoying. "Morning's coming fast enough. Don't rush it none."

He watches Luke nod in some sort of solemn agreement with that. Kisses him for being so agreeable.

"Guess you found the doughnuts then," goes to prove that Luke left them out for him to eat.

"Yep." Bo closes his eyes, shifts a little to get more comfortable around that bony shoulder under his ear. "Thanks. Woulda been better if they was glazed, though."

A snicker, and Luke pulls on his arm so his ear'll rest more on chest than shoulder. Muscle isn't a lot softer than bone, but it'll do.

* * *

"So," the guy leaning on the wall next to him says, all conversationally. Skinny but wiry, shorter than Luke. Funny twang to his voice that's not exactly mountain, cigarette hanging from the first two fingers of his left hand. "You're the famous Luke Duke."

He smirks on the side of his mouth that Itchy, as the guy self-introduced a half hour or so back, can see. Bo had been too busy hollering silly insults at some other guy in the far corner of the garage to do a proper job of introducing them, but Itchy hadn't worried too hard about that, just walked right up and said hello like it was every day that Bo Duke brought a stranger into the motorplex.

"You ain't a revenuer, are you?" he asks Itchy. Doesn't look like one, with those tattoos all up the curves of his arms and disappearing into the sleeves of his dirty tee shirt. Long dark hair pulled into a low ponytail and he looks more like an overgrown teenager than anything else. But revenuers have been known to come in cleverly disguised packages.

Itchy takes a pull on his cigarette, lets the smoke escape slowly through his nose.

"No sir," he answers, raising an eyebrow at Luke's questionable powers of deduction. Luke just snickers; it would be pointless to explain that the only fame he's ever garnered in his life has been amongst one particular band of revenuers who set their sights on putting the Duke boys out of the whiskey business.

There's a high whine that's getting louder and changing pitch as it approaches. Conversation stops until it becomes a roar, then retreats again. Bo doing laps in the Ford Thunderbird that's apparently his second car in case something goes wrong with the main one he uses. Painted yellow and blue with a motor oil logo on the back and the number 43 on the side. Nowhere near as pretty as the General Lee.

"Hazzard," which seems to be what some of the guys here call Bo. Before they came to the track, he and his cousin spent an hour in the gym, where Luke got to meet – and not particularly care for – Bo's physical trainer. Butch, who Luke remembers full well hearing about on that day Bo brought Daisy home. Known for giving special exercises to guys who are absent from his workouts, and Luke would like to give good old Butch a little extra exercise in a boxing ring. Wouldn't take but half a round to take him out. Most of the guys that passed through the gym while he was there glowering at Butch referred to Bo as 'Hazzard' just like Itchy does now. "Used to talk about you all the time when he first came here. My cousin this and Luke that. You're supposed to be some kind of mechanical genius. Built that fine piece of machinery that Bo tools around town in."

The General Lee.

"We built him together," Luke insists, and then that droning whine starts making its way around again.

Going through Bo's day with him has been anything but comfortable. By the time they woke up for what might have been the third time this morning, Bo was running late for his daily routine. No time to argue over sex or responsibility or who is going to tell Jesse and when. Strange, they've never been too busy to get around to fighting with each other before.

Everywhere they've been, from the nutrition bar to the gym and now the track, Bo has been hustled straight into some kind of activity or other, leaving Luke to do nothing at all but watch him. Talk to anyone that finds him a curiosity, like Itchy, but otherwise just cool his heels and wait on Bo to have a whole minute to say anything at all to him.

He doesn't like it.

Itchy's all right, anyway. Seems to know Bo better than the rest of them.

"Quite a car." And furthermore, he respects the General Lee. Seems like a real stand-up guy. "He ain't never let me drive it, he says ain't nobody but a Duke ever been able to do it justice. And me being an Itzkowitz, I ain't got the right genes." Poor guy looks sad about that. But it's true – aside from Cooter, no one outside the family has ever been able to properly handle the General's power. In fact, more than one fool has gotten behind the wheel only to sink him into a lake or river. "You're supposed to be as good a driver as him, too."

The whine of the car's engine is growing again, giving Itchy a chance to smoke with a true dedication to the task rather than distracting himself with conversation. Bo comes around more slowly this time, gets about a quarter of the way up the straightaway and does a bootlegger turn that sends the car into a pretty little spin. Showoff.

Smell of burnt rubber that's about the equivalent of Bo sticking out a taunting tongue, then the car pushes forward out of its own cloud of smoke and starts back around the track again.

"He's exaggerating," Luke tells Itchy. "About my driving. What about you? You ever want to drive one of them babies?" pointing loosely to any number of racecars strewn about like so many discarded toys.

Itchy offers him a sardonic smile full of yellowed teeth. Reminds him of all those smokers he knew in the Marine Corps that swore their beloved cigarettes weren't doing them any kind of permanent damage.

"'Course I did. I can hold my own." Flick of ashes to the ground. "Not like your cousin, but I can stick to the track good enough." Here comes Bo again. It's a wonder that all these guys that work in the pit aren't deaf. Luke's ears are humming and he's only been out here a half hour or so. "All them guys you see here," cigarette hand gesturing around the pit and the garage beyond. "All of them had dreams of driving. Back in the day there wasn't so much competition." Sure, way back before he and Itchy and all the guys around them were born. But Itchy talks about it as though he was here to experience it. Maybe he's daydreamed about it enough that he almost feels like he was. "And any boy who really wanted to could make the cut. Now it's only the crazy-talented ones like your cousin. If you're as good as he says, you should be out there, too."

The car comes whining around the fourth turn again, saving Luke from having to explain things like hero-worship and younger cousins, and how Bo has always looked up to him just a little too much.

"Well," Itchy says, tossing his cigarette wherever it lands and trusting the concrete to extinguish the flame. Doesn't seem like the smartest choice, all things considered. The ground is stained with oil, probably gasoline, too. "Got to get back to work."

Luke waves as the crew member leaves and then goes back to watching Bo drive around in circles until his cousin finally pulls the car off the track, emerges from the window and announces that it's time for lunch: a protein shake back at the gym. Excellent, because Luke was missing Butch's company so much.

* * *

Lem's face is a high pink, which means he's well on his way to being drunk. Luke's laughing with him over that same old tale he likes to tell about the time Buddy Baker rolled his car off one of the old dirt tracks they used to drive when they were younger, and right into the fence of a farm that bordered on the track. Buddy crawled out of his upside down car, dizzy and disoriented, only to get attacked by what must have been a whole army of chickens.

Bo's heard the story plenty of times, as has just about everyone else in the Mooresville Tavern. But Lem never tells it the same way twice and besides, he's got a brand new audience in Luke, so he's delivering it with great flourish.

It's good to see Luke sitting at the table with a few of the guys that Bo has come to consider friends over the past few years and halfway enjoying himself. The whole day, up until now, has featured Luke standing quietly in one corner or another, arms folded resolutely across his chest, watching the routine of a NASCAR driver with disdain or discomfort. Except when he did some bench presses in the gym, but that was just showing off. Proving to everyone in the place (which was mostly Bo, Butch and Don) that Luke Duke was stronger than them all. And not for any part of the day has Luke looked even slightly at ease.

"Then the old lady comes out," Lem's saying, slight pause for effect (and to drain the rest of the beer in his mug), "and starts beating him with her broom!"

Luke throws his head back and awards this bit of brilliance with a deep laugh. Bo assesses the group: Itchy, who is laughing more at Luke's reaction than Lem's story, Bubs Jackson with his shaking head and dark eyes rolling at any fool who would encourage Lemuel Anderson to tell that same old tale, Don, who is staring intently at the back corner where a blond girl is just as intently ignoring him, and Chief, who leans back in his chair to frown at the whole bunch of them. Someone must have left a hose stretched across the pit or used a wrench when they should have used pliers; that kind of thing always leaves Chief in a surly mood.

Mostly, what Bo notices about the group is that more of them have empty or near-empty beers than full ones. Time for a refill.

"I got the next round," he announces.

"Hey," Don interrupts his deep study of the anatomy of the female human to say, "what ever happened to the rules? New guy gets the second round." Which is not really a rule and more of a joke. Supposed to make him laugh because it's partly at his expense, but it's not even slightly funny. Not when the supposed new guy is Luke.

"I said I got it," he snaps, and it's a mistake. Not that he can think of any better way he should have handled it, but the tension's back in Luke's jaw and he's got those arms folded high and tight across his heart again.

Relentless, that's what the guys are. They get stuck in a groove and they just ride along it, even if they are supposed to be quick-thinking NASCAR folks. Reliving an old joke that never was funny, from when the older, more established guys hazed him and Don. Made stupid rules about what the new guys had to do, including buying rounds of beer. Don hardly drinks any to begin with and never had anything stronger than a Coke, back in those days. But the joke went that the new guy had to buy a round, so Don bought plenty of beer that he never drank.

It's ridiculous, anyway; Luke's not a new guy, he's kin. And though Don remembers some of the parts of how the two former rookies came to be friends and go out carousing together, he doesn't remember the details. Like how poor Bo was when they started out, how he never had any money to spare until he won the purse in that race in Charlottesville and got himself some real earnings.

Don doesn't have the first idea how little money Luke must have in his pocket, or what it's like to be a moonshiner-turned-farmer from a small county that grows far more rocks and weeds than crops.

_(Dave Mays had at least told Doug Reed that there were two of them. That Bo wasn't the lone Duke boy from Hazzard County. So the team owner knew that racing and driving had pretty much run in the family._

_None of the rest of them had any idea. Not that he had any idea about them, either. They were just a bunch of rough and ready, fun-loving guys. Some of them had brothers and sisters, and Bubs even had an older brother who had also wanted to work for NASCAR but wound up a mechanic at some small-town garage instead. But none of them had grown up with Luke._

_Early on, he was okay. It was just a new experience, being away from home. He figured he'd get used to it, just like he got used to going to school when he was a kid. Or like he got used to Luke being away for those years that he was in the Marine Corps. (Except he hadn't ever gotten used to either of those things, not really.) Besides, there was plenty around to distract him. A different routine for his days, new people to meet, a chance to see and even drive on all the famous tracks that he had only ever seen glossy pictures of in racing magazines._

_But eventually it became sort of obvious that there was something odd and a little different about Bo. The habit he had of looking to his right for the guy next to him to agree with him, even when there was a virtual stranger (or no one at all) standing there. The hitch in his step when he waited for someone who wasn't there to catch up to him, the harmonies that he sang without any melody underneath them._

_That, he figured, was easy enough to explain. He told them all about Hazzard, the farm, his broken family cobbled together into a new one. He talked about dirt roads, crooked lawmen and oh yeah, he talked about Luke._

_He liked talking about Luke, it made him less lonely. It explained who he was because he had no memories before his cousin. Everything he'd done and everywhere he'd ever been had just been following after Luke. They shared a car and a reputation, half the time they shared the one name of BoandLukeDuke, especially when it was Boss talking. His whole life he'd been the younger Duke boy or the blonde Duke boy or the taller Duke boy – he'd never had to explain why Luke was at the center of every sentence he uttered before, and he didn't explain it now, either._

_Until the day that Chief had taken him aside and told him that he'd been here long enough now, and it was time to settle down. Time to get his head out of Hazzard and the past, time to grow up and pay attention to exactly where he was and what he was doing or he'd never realize his potential as a driver._

" _I'm sure Luke's a fine man," Chief had said. "And I can see how important he is to you. But he's not here. He's not the one with the Reed contract, driving in major races on national television, he's not the one that's got the driving talent to be on the NASCAR circuit."_

_Bo had defended Luke then, tried to explain that it was only because Luke hadn't wanted to drive for Dave Mays that he wasn't here. Luke was as good as him, or almost, and he was definitely better than Don or Lem…_

_Chief had laughed at him and reminded him that Lem had been driving since Bo was in diapers. He was the senior driver on the team and just because Bo was a young hotshot didn't mean he had half the experience it would take to be as good as Lem. Fast wasn't enough, a driver had to be smart, too. "If you want to survive on the big track, boy, you've got to pay attention to everything around you, not be daydreaming about how you think you're better than every one else out there." Chief had informed him. "And you can't be thinking about some cousin that doesn't even want to be here. It's time you figured out how to be your own man."_

_Bo had nodded like a good boy, mumbled something approximating a yes, sir. Gone home at the end of the day to an apartment that was emptier than anyplace he'd ever been before and made a phone call to the farmhouse. Talked to Jesse about his loneliness, got told that it was perfectly natural to be sad but he shouldn't give up his lifetime dream over a little bout of homesickness. The oldster had tried to hand the phone off to Luke, but had gotten a gruff denial that had come clearly across the phone lines, and some excuse about chores. Luke probably got his hide tanned later, but Jesse came back on the line then and told him he could talk to his cousin some other time._

_The next day, Bo went back to the gym and the track, held his tongue about Luke and tried to be serious about his driving. Over time he'd figured out a balance of when it was okay to reminisce and when he needed to leave the past alone. He'd made peace with Chief and the other guys had taken him into the fold._

_But he'd never stopped missing home or wanting to tell the tales of his days with Luke.)_

Standing there getting gawked at by Don and glared at by Luke isn't doing him a bit of good, so Bo heads to the bar to order their round of drinks. Lists off everyone's favorites to the barmaid, then smiles for her as she draws them. Listens to her chatter away about the kind of night it's been so far then leaves her a big tip. Dealing with the likes of NASCAR drivers and crewmen can't be a whole lot of fun.

By the time he gets back to the table, conversation has started up again. Bubs is talking about next season's schedule and how grueling it will be to crew in Daytona in July (and the man should try driving in that kind of heat) while Luke feigns interest. Looking in the right direction and smiling or nodding at approximately the right times, but Bo knows him better than that. Luke's off his own turf and not liking it one bit. He's going to be stewing all night.

* * *

"Luke," Bo whines at him like somebody's wife.

Not, Luke figures, that he's being any less wifely. Sitting on the bed a clear distance from Bo, his back against the backboard and sheet pulled demurely up to his bare chest, folded arms holding it in place.

"I've got to go back tonight," he reminds Bo and at least his voice is masculine, even if his posture is not.

"I know that."

Back when he got Boss's written permission to be out of Hazzard, he swore to himself that he wouldn't squander it away this time. That he'd stay the length of it, and he has. All the same he can't help feeling that it's been halfway squandered anyway.

Maybe he and Bo have forgotten how to live under the same roof, or maybe he's forgotten what life was like when they shared that roof. Somehow, he didn't expect that quite so much of this visit would be spent at odds with one another.

"Luke, I got to go to work."

_Since when you been so all-fired anxious to go to work?_ Last time he and Bo had this argument, his cousin left home to take up with a manipulative carnival owner that just about got him killed.

"It's just one day, Bo."

It's one argument amongst several over the course of six days, about everything from whether they needed to do laundry instead of going out one night (Luke won that one and it's the only reason Bo will have a clean tee shirt to wear whenever they get done arguing or having sex – whichever way it works out this time) to those protein shakes Bo drinks half the time instead of eating.

NASCAR is – well, his cousin has survived it well enough for three years, but it's not whatever Luke might have imagined it would be. It demands too much of Bo.

Then again, maybe he's a damned fool who had some deep-seated and nearly subconscious wish that this stretch of days would change something. That Bo would see everything in a new and different light and decide to leave NASCAR to come home and be with him. Oh, it wasn't exactly a logical thought; Bo hasn't ever done exactly what Luke wants him to.

"It's the off-season, anyways, don't you get no time off?" Because if Bo's not going to quit outright this week, he could take some time away from the endless routine of it. A trial resignation from the circuit, maybe, just to see what it's like.

Bo's sitting on the far edge of the bed – funny how Luke's been here less than a week and already he's thinking of it as Bo's half of the bed – eyes watching the one foot that he has dangling down to the floor.

"If I ask for it in advance." And Bo didn't know that Luke was coming to do the asking.

Still, it's just one day. Luke's got to be back in Hazzard by midnight tonight or he turns into a felon, and all they've got is about twelve hours before he has to hit the road. He's just about tired of having the majority of their time lost to Bo working out or driving or going out afterward with his team. If Bo was in Hazzard with him, they'd have all day to get lost on dirt roads together, and even if they had to work, they'd be doing it side by side, not with one of them standing off in a corner and not really belonging there to begin with.

"Fine," Luke says, because this isn't even a fight, really. Not like all the little bursts of temper and bickering that have peppered their evenings, to be followed by pouting and then, eventually, one of them grabbing hold of the other so they can work it out with their mouths, their bodies. So they can release the tension and energy and be too tired to start in again for a while. What's going on at this particular moment is more like Bo silently begging him not to start with him now, not when he has to go to the gym wearing his game face for that Pedro-turned-Butch, then drive through some drills with the other guys and finally meet with some potential sponsor or other. "Come on," he says, throwing the sheet off with intent to get up and get dressed.

"Luke," Bo says again, and underneath the whine, there's sadness. If Luke's got to leave, well, Bo's got to be left and that's not a lot of fun, either. Luke should know.

"I'll see if I can get another pass, but you know old J.D.," he says. "He's already given me a bunch, which I figure is because he's planning something big back home. Eventually I'm going to have to stop him for whatever he's up to—"

"And then you won't be able to get no more passes," Bo huffs.

_Eventually_ , he wants to say, but he doesn't. Because some things have changed, but not too many. Bo's still got hold of his lifelong dream by the tail and he's got to be the one who decides to keep it or give it up. _You're going to have to come home._

He settles back into the bed instead, rolls over and grabs Bo around the waist. No intent there other than to tease him out of his pout. But Bo's perfectly willing to be brought right back into the bed, to roll over and face him, wrap one bare leg around both of his and an arm around his shoulder. Wiggling and squirming until the position's just right.

"When can you get time off?" Luke asks him instead of that other thing, the one that asks too much of him.

Bo kisses him, just as sad a press of lips as every other part of this morning has been since Bo started to get out of bed and go to work rather than stay here and roll around with Luke.

"I'll be home the week of Christmas," Bo promises.

Three weeks away. It's nothing at all, really, he's had a case of poison ivy that lasted longer than that. Still, it's ridiculous to have to wait that long to see Bo, who he used to spend pretty much every hour of the day with.

He kisses Bo back and resolves to get himself one more pass before then, even if it means that Boss gets away with robbing the town blind while he's gone.


	16. Chapter 16

Dress pants, pressed into a perfect crease by Mathilda. Bo's only got about two pairs of those, versus something like a dozen pairs of jeans that Mathilda would be glad to press in exactly the same way, if he'd let her. But he figures some things are just meant to be rumpled.

White cotton shirt with a tie, jacket to match the pants. His winning-suit, as all the guys call it. The thing a driver winds up having to wear if he does well enough on the circuit (or has a pretty enough face, as Lem keeps telling him) to have to meet with sponsors and appear in print ads or commercials. The seams itch against parts of him that would be impolite to scratch in public; he just about never wears this suit unless he has to.

Seemed like a good idea to put it on this morning, but now he feels the fool. Standing on a street corner in Clemmons, with Luke in his jeans (newish ones, at least) and Jesse in his faded overalls and black coat that's too tight to button across his chest. Daisy's there, too, in a simple black dress with white polka dots, covered over with a dark gray coat, black stockings and black, low-heeled shoes. Proper attire for a funeral, and maybe that's what this is to her.

The call came last week from Jesse, phone's ring echoing off the walls until it found him – alone and trying to care about the sheets and sheets of last season's driving statistics Doug Reed had handed off for him to study – slouching in his bed, feeling lonely. Three days after Luke left and maybe he could see the value now in what Luke had been asking him to do. Take a day away from the routine of his job and just enjoy his company because when he was gone… it was kind of like having a hangover. Everything hurt.

The phone ringing was like hair of the dog or just a momentary reprieve. Someone wanting to spend a little time talking to him and he even let himself hope it would be Luke. Jesse was a reasonably good second choice, though, he was happy enough to hear the old man's voice. Until he learned that the call was more business than anything else. Telling him to show up in Clemmons the following Tuesday.

Daisy's decided to go ahead and file for divorce from L.D., even if she doesn't know where to find the idiot she married in order to serve him with papers to that effect. There's a lawyer in Clemmons that's known for his skill with divorce and that's who Daisy has chosen to handle her case. That phone call last weekend was to summon him to Clemmons today; Jesse figured that it would be good to surround her with family while she goes through this, just as they were all there when she got married. It's old-timers logic, crooked and bent over backwards, not making a whole lot of sense, but he wasn't brave enough to point that out to the old-timer in question.

Besides, he's the fool that put on his finest clothing for this inauspicious event. Revisiting the wedding only goes as far as being here and not to how they're meant to dress. Would have been nice if that had been part of the instructions, along with when and where to meet.

No matter, they're all here now and there's no time to change anything about it.

He tucks Daisy under his arm. She looks scared in a way that he's not used to seeing. Oh sure, a spider will make her eyebrows pop up and her jaw drop open into a scream, but the look on her face right now is something different. Something reminiscent of how she looked back when they learned that Aunt Lavinia wasn't going to pull through this time.

"You about ready?" Luke asks her and gets a side-eyed look from Jesse. One that's trying to scold his oldest for being about as gentle as a buzz saw, but can't quite manage it because they've all been standing out on the cold pavement in front of the lawyer's office for far too long. Saying nothing of any real consequence and waiting for Daisy to get up the gumption to go inside and put her marriage out of its misery.

Or change her mind because she's plenty apt to do that, too.

If she ever gets around to going inside and starting divorce proceedings, he and Luke are supposed to make sure that she has some fun afterward. Jesse's got to head back down to Hazzard to tend to the livestock, so he's leaving the two of them in charge of somehow entertaining her, which probably means she'll drag them shopping. In his dress clothes that itch at him in all the worst ways and his tie that's too like a noose and he'd really just as soon go home now.

"I reckon," Daisy mutters in a breathy little voice, but she doesn't move and Bo doesn't try to make her. Just offers up a little squeeze.

Go home now, yeah that would be just about perfect. If, that is, he could take Luke with him. There he was, not ten days ago, refusing to take a day off to spend with Luke. (But it wouldn't have looked good; he was able to give a valid reason for skipping out on all his obligations today. When Luke was visiting it would have just been obvious that he wanted to spend time with his cousin, and that's just not a reasonable excuse to the likes of Butch and Chief.) Now he's got a whole day free and Luke's right here, but he can't even touch him. Other than the hug he gave him when they all met up in the parking lot behind this row of stone and brick buildings. Jesse smiled about that even if he's looked nothing but grim ever since. Bo reckons that he might just finally have clawed his way out of the doghouse as far as their uncle is concerned.

"Take your time," Jesse tells Daisy and Bo figures that Luke's getting ready to shove her right through the doors.

"No, it's okay," Daisy assures him. "I'm ready."

But she doesn't move. Luke gives him a look, and he completely agrees with the look because if they were inside he could slide into the men's room and scratch where the pants are itching him, but he can't shove her forward no matter how tired they all are of standing out here under gray skies and a chilly wind.

Even Jesse's starting to fidget. Maudine's back on the farm with no one to talk to her endlessly about the weather and the crops and previous winters that were lean and mean. And whatever else Jesse tells her in those twilight hours when he spends time in the barn, prattling on.

"Listen, sweetheart," he all but whispers at her. Because she's already about to cry and he doesn't want to get yelled at for upsetting her. And just maybe he remembers a little too well how miserable she was that morning when she showed up in his kitchen, cooking him a tear-flavored breakfast. "You go on and do whatever it is you got to do," which might be signing some papers or crying or anything at all and Bo doesn't exactly want to be present for that part. "And after, Luke and me'll take you out for a real fine dinner. In a restaurant with white tablecloths and everything."

Jesse's beard twitches just the slightest bit at that, like Bo's said something funny. Luke looks mean, but he hasn't looked anything but since the moment Bo first saw him. Probably planning out exactly how to break L.D.'s legs slowly and in the most deliberately painful of ways. Daisy, though, gives a brave little nod, scoots out from under his arm and walks up the two concrete steps, pulls open the glass door and steps inside. Luke mumbles things that don't sound precisely nice and follows the rest of them as they trail behind her.

* * *

A fine dinner with a white tablecloth.

At least Hannah was a cheap date. That mean little thought sticks in his head through the endless minutes of sitting in a creaking vinyl chair in the corner of an otherwise quiet waiting room with nothing but white walls or industrial-gray carpet (or Bo's face, but he's not ready to look at that) to stare at and pass the time. Bo keeps shifting around in his seat, just this side of sighing and asking if they can go yet like a bored brat in the middle of a long church sermon. Jesse's behind the closed door with Daisy and Howard Ralston, Esq. who, frankly, looks every bit as slick as L.D. ever did. Luke can't make up his mind how he feels about that – whether he figures Daisy's found herself another flatlander that's going to want to take advantage of her, or if maybe it's for the best to send one sidewinder slithering off in pursuit of another.

Not that it matters, because Daisy has chosen this lawyer and Bo has bribed her to get on with it by offering her a proper dinner.

Like when he insisted he'd buy the next round of beers at the Mooresville Pub a couple of weeks back.

Luke's got no money to spare and it's no secret to anyone. Back home, Rosco thinks nothing of reminding the whole town that the Dukes are poor as church mice. Luke takes it pretty much in stride, but then again, there's Bo. In his fancy suit with the misty gray, soft fabric that must have been tailored just for him. Fits perfectly around his broad chest, tapers nicely for his waist and the pants hang right down to his ankles without showing even the slightest edge of a sock. His fancy cousin, offering beers all around and a fancy dinner to any needy person who happens to be thirsty or hungry.

Well, Luke may be poor but he's not needy and he reckons he's going to have to set Bo straight about that. Soon, not now, because even if they're alone in this particular space, it's surrounded by plenty of other spaces and they can't be sure about the thickness or soundproofing of these walls. They look downright flimsy, really.

So he sits – nice and still like an adult, as opposed to the way Bo wiggles and squirms in his chair – and stews on exactly how he's going to get out of going to dinner, but then again he doesn't want to go home with Jesse, doesn't want to squander any of the time he has with Bo, even if he is mad at him. Figures what he really needs is about five minutes to pound the tar out of him, then another half hour to show how sorry he is, and everything will be fine. And knows that none of that can happen.

Bo's practically doing a little dance next to him.

"She's going to be okay, you know," comes out a bit more roughly than makes sense outside of his own head. But if Bo doesn't sit still he might just have to find a time and place to smack him after all.

Bo huffs at him. "I know that." But he doesn't, not really. He never has been very good at handling when something bad happens to Daisy. (But the marriage happened about two-and-a-half years back, so all the bad part is over now. This divorce is a good thing. Once she gets used to it, Daisy will see that, too.)

Luke goes back to staring at the walls covered in dumb pictures that look like something cut out of an art book with a frame thrown around. Nothing that gives any credibility at all to this lawyer that Daisy's entrusting her future to.

Bo shifts around some more and Luke's about to start looking for some rope to tie him up when the door to the inner office opens and Daisy and Jesse make their way out, followed by Ralston, and all manner of _thank you_ s and _we'll be in touche_ s get muttered. By the time the four of them make it out the glass door, the light is pretty dingy, and the sky is threatening to open up on them. Great, they've got a pickup, an topless jeep and the General, whose doors don't open and windows don't close. And Jesse's about to take that first one right out of town without any of them in it.

They amble slowly to the parking lot anyway, Daisy arm-in-arm with their uncle. It's like a dirge, though at least the girl's not quite so seasick green around the edges. Luke's not entirely sure what they're mourning when Daisy's much better off shed of the guy, but girls and old men are funny that way, so he leaves it alone.

"Well," Uncle Jesse says when they get to where their cars are all parked. It is going to rain soon enough and yet here they are moving just as slow as molasses. Like they're stuck in one of those nightmares where it really would be best to run, if only you could get your legs to move. "I reckon I'll head back home." Uncle Jesse's even talking slow. As though he figures Daisy's forgotten the English language and needs him to carefully enunciate each word. "Unless you need me to stay?" But Maudine and the other livestock would not care for that development.

"No," Daisy says, halting her steps in front of the driver's side door of the pickup. She works hard at producing a smile. It's not real, looks kind of like she ate a lemon and the corners of her mouth are curling against her will. "I'm fine. I reckon it's a good thing I done this," she tries to convince herself. "Ain't it?"

Bo steps away from his customary place at Luke's shoulder to go to her side, slip an arm around her. To shift and twitch, because he can't seem to stay still today.

"Of course it is, sweetheart," he says, helpfully. "When your boots get holes in them, it's time to throw them out. You'll get new ones soon."

It's—well, if Luke said it, he'd be getting called a buzz saw and offered a whipping. Jesse's dark look is considering equal treatment for Bo, who is smiling like he's just cracked the world's funniest joke. Daisy's eyes are popping and Luke figures he's going to spend a good chunk of the afternoon watching a pink handprint fade off his youngest cousin's cheek. Then, impossibly, Daisy smiles. For real, then laughs. "Bo!" she says, but she's only scolding him for having lousy humor.

It's so stupid that even Luke has to snicker and he halfway figures everything's going to be all right now. The rest of the day, even if they do wind up going to some stupid, fancy restaurant on Bo's NASCAR dime, might just be reasonably fun.

Until Jesse's face gets hard-edged, his eyes meaner than the clouds in the sky.

"It ain't funny," he barks at them. Daisy stops laughing right away, bows her head like a properly chastened child and gets squeezed again by Bo, even as he lets a few loose giggles spill out. He's sorry too, his attempts at sobriety go to prove that. But he's like a kid who can't quite get control over himself.

Luke lets the smirk stay firmly on his face. Maybe it distracts Jesse from what Bo's doing, and maybe Luke just figures that the laughing Daisy was just doing is more important than whatever Jesse's objections are. Maybe he's sassing and maybe he wants that whipping after all.

"Anything that breaks up a family," here comes a heavy finger, getting ready to point to each of them in turn. "Even one that ain't quite happened yet," or maybe just to point right at him, to be punctuated by a hard squint. "Ain't funny."

He's not smirking anymore, and he's not the one who just signed divorce papers or made a stupid joke. But he's at the business end of Jesse's wrath and while he'd like to complain of injustice, he can't. He knows exactly what the old man's getting at.

Jesse may never have genuinely cared for L.D. Southerland, but he loved Hannah, and he still hasn't begun to forgive Luke for breaking their engagement.

_("Are you cold?"_

_He wasn't. It wasn't reasonable to be cold when it wasn't even winter. Barely fall, and Hannah had been down here in Hazzard for a year. She should have realized that summer was endless and far too hot, should have figured out that the first cool breezes were to be relished, not complained about._

_He put his arm around her because he didn't have a coat to offer._

_Up in the loft of the barn, with the doors open. Staring at the stars on a Friday night instead of going to the Boar's Nest because this was a grown up's life he was living. No driving down dirt roads at breakneck speeds with blue and red lights flashing in the rearview mirror and a dry creek bed stretching out in front, no crazy nights of beer and sweat and loud music, only to end with his face getting slapped by a girl or punched by her boyfriend. Just one shivering woman under his arm, straw under his backside and the stars in the sky. It was better, really. He'd told himself that a hundred times and then a thousand more. Talked himself into this moment and he wasn't nervous. That feeling in his belly wasn't butterflies so much as toads. Hopping around in thick mud._

" _Hannah," he started, and the toads all jumped from one side of his belly to the other in a hurry. A matter of life or death and he swallowed down hard to try to keep them from hopping right out his throat. Drew in a deep breath of barn air, smelling of moldy straw and livestock. "You warm enough now?"_

_See, it wasn't butterflies, because it couldn't be. They were lightweight little insects, free to go where they wanted. Happy enough with their flitting from here to there and barely touching down on one flower before moving on to the next. Drinking sweet nectar, not eating flies._

_Bo had stopped calling home. At least that was what Luke figured, he couldn't be sure. Maybe Jesse and Bo had pre-arranged times at which they talked or maybe the old man called Bo. All he could be sure of was that Jesse hadn't tried to hand him the phone in months._

_And he figured that was okay. Neither he nor Bo really wanted to talk to each other anyway when there was so much they couldn't say. If they kept to the rules they'd agreed on they were pretty much left with in-depth discussions of the weather. Last week's rain followed by this week's sun – that was as much as they could talk about._

_But Luke's birthday had recently passed._

_All right, he hadn't gone to that black, hard-backed address book with the cracked spine that Jesse kept at the end of the shelf, looked up Bo's phone number and called him to say happy birthday last April when Bo had turned twenty-three. But he'd sent him a card, at least, with a note written inside about how the planting had gone just fine and Bo didn't need to worry about anything back home. A little reassurance and he'd hesitated a bit, but in the end, he'd gone ahead and signed it 'Love, Luke.' Because he would have signed it that way even if they'd never been anything more than cousins._

_Luke's birthday, now almost a month gone by, had been utterly unacknowledged. A couple of big races had surrounded the date itself and Bo had won the Southern 500 just before it. There was a lot to do when you won a race, Luke figured, though he didn't know exactly what the doing would entail. (On the tri-county dirt track circuit it meant getting well and properly drunk, acting like a fool, finding a girl and some approximation of privacy. NASCAR was bigger and more public, Luke reckoned that could lead to getting more drunk and more girls and giving up the illusion of privacy, but he didn't know for sure.) He'd understood that Bo was awfully busy and on the road besides, even if the races were both in the southeast. He'd given it time, but the two-week fall break in the NASCAR schedule had passed by without even a scrap of hotel stationery covered in scrawled good wishes arriving at the Duke farm, and Luke figured it was time he quit waiting. Gave up on Bo getting tired of the circuit or missing home (or him) and just—_

_It was time he grew up, left the childish things he wasn't meant to have behind him, and settled down. For real, not just because he somehow hoped that behaving himself would somehow lead to being rewarded with what he really wanted._

" _Mmm," Hannah answered, snuggling in closer to him, resting her head in the crook of his shoulder where she'd always fit so neatly. Like it was predestined for him to wind up with a small girl like her. If it was mildly annoying that the dark curl of her hair itched against his cheek, he figured that if being brought up in a drafty farmhouse set crookedly on the uneven land of a farm that sometimes grew rocks better than it did crops had taught him one thing, it was that nothing was perfect. Like Lavinia had always said, 'make the best of what you've got.' "Better," and Hannah kissed his jaw for his efforts to keep her warm (or keep her from her backward complaining about the crisp air, anyway)._

" _Good." Luke nodded his head firmly at just how good it was. Nodded again because the toads had settled from their disruptive ways and he really ought to get those words said. "I reckon—that's good." Maudine below them snorted; a chicken clucked in answer._

" _Which one is that, again?" She was pointing out the loft doors at a star or a constellation; he couldn't be sure when her hand wasn't aligned with his eye. But there were only a couple that she had ever expressed particular interest in._

" _Polaris," he decided. She'd always had a fascination for hearing how he used it to guide him on moonshine runs and military missions. It was the one they talked about most, so it was reasonably good guess._

_She shoved her shoulder into his ribcage. She wasn't bony, but some parts of her were sharp enough to hurt. Not that he'd ever say anything to her about that. "Not that one." Apparently he was being silly. "That one." She pointed, but her head was tipped up toward him. Eyes studying his face and though it was too dark to see the color, he knew it was there. That almost-amber of her eyes that all the church ladies figured would look so pretty in the faces of the next generation of Duke kids._

_He kissed her because he had no idea what star she might have wanted him to identify and no ability to concentrate long enough to figure it out. Just had to keep those toads under control and do what needed to be done._

_More chickens clucking below them and it made him wonder what was going on down there that was keeping them from sleeping. Hannah probably thought about nothing at all but kissing him and he figured maybe that wasn't bad. She wasn't farm-raised, didn't know much about what farming entailed and the only animal with which she had any familiarity at all was the barn cat that came and went as it saw fit. But her lack of farming skill wouldn't matter so long as she managed to just keep on having faith in him and letting him make all the important decisions. They just needed to have a son soon so that Jesse could retire in a dozen years or so and the boy could join Luke in the fields. Two sons would be better, since the Duke farm had always been best managed when there were three men working it._

_He kissed her far longer than he should have, he reckoned. There she was, turning to face him better, her hands rubbing at his arms in hungry little strokes, breasts pressing up against him and he didn't want what they were doing to turn into this. Not here, not now. Sex had gotten better, easier between them; he liked it well enough. But not in his uncle's barn because some things were worth the risk, but this one wasn't. He pushed her back._

_Gently, he wasn't mean about it, but he didn't want to lead her down that path when he had no real interest in reaching its end. Kissing was only meant to be a stalling tactic and here it was, about to get him into a whole different sort of mess._

_A herd of toads, galloping around his stomach and he ignored them all. Held onto her shoulder with one hand, shifted his weight around until he could wedge the broad fingers of his other hand into the back pocket of his jeans and wished he'd thought to wear some looser ones. Didn't know how to interpret the sigh he got from Hannah, so he didn't even try. Just pulled out the tiny box that had been on the top shelf of the closet in his bedroom from the time he came to the farm until this morning, opened it and offered it to her._

" _Will you marry me?" he said. No prelude, no kneeling, nothing at all but those words._

_He braced himself, not for her answer, but for those toads to get romping all over the place again. Felt dizzy and sick, felt the way she sucked in her breath and figured that was a good idea. Breathing was always advised, even in situations like this one, where he couldn't decide which he wanted to hear less, a no or a yes._

" _Luke," she gasped and like a fool (or a girl, Daisy would have done the same thing) she started to cry. Looked at the ring then his face, then back again, trying to get herself under control._

" _It was my mother's," he said to explain the ring, and that was a mistake. Just made the tears come faster and any words she might have wanted to say (should have already said) come slower._

_He patted her shoulder, because that was what you did when people cried. That was what people had done to him when he'd stood at the edge of a hole in the ground, looking down at the handful of dirt he'd just thrown in onto his mother's coffin, and then Uncle Jesse had scooped him up into his arms and carried him to the black Ford sedan that had served as the family car at the time. But Hannah was too big to carry like that and she was getting control of herself by that point anyway._

" _Yes," she said. "I will."_

_And the damned toads burrowed down into the mud at the pit of his stomach and made themselves at home there._

_He'd left it up to the fates, maybe. Not that he believed in fate but he was smart enough to know that there was a lot that he didn't control. So he'd asked her and figured he'd work it out either way – if she said no, he'd accept that he wasn't really meant to properly settle down and if she said yes he'd figure out some way to be the family man his father had been, and his father's father before that._

_She said yes and he had to live with that._

_They kissed because that was how you sealed that sort of a deal, and he'd told her to wait until they got inside and he'd put the ring on her finger, because he didn't want to drop it in the dark and lose it in the straw. Maybe that made him a clod, but she just nodded and kissed him again, then hugged him hard around his neck._

_Later, they'd gone back into the house and he'd called Jesse into the kitchen so the old man could watch him properly offer her the ring. The damned tears had started up again, Jesse blowing his nose into his handkerchief, patting him on the back and hugging Hannah. Luke had the strangest urge to go off on his own and leave the two of them there, weeping on each other's shoulders.)_

"Sorry, Uncle Jesse," Bo mumbles, but he only thinks he knows what he's apologizing for. "Sorry, Daisy," he adds, and Bo's not as dumb as he sometimes pretends to be. It always pays to say sorry to the girl if you want to old man to forgive you. Or just stop threatening to whip you.

Jesse lets his rheumy eyes roll around to stare at each of them in equal measure. "All right then," he says and opens his arms to give Bo a bear hug and to tell him how good it's been to see him. Pats Daisy on the shoulder and tells her and Luke not to linger too long and risk overstaying the pass out of state that he had to beg J.D. to offer Luke. Climbs up into the pickup and he's gone.

Leaving the three of them to fumble around about who is going to end up in which car and where they're going. In the end Daisy declares that white table cloths are all well and good, but she'd rather have a comfortable meal at Bo's. She gets sent to ride in the General with Bo because she's a broken-hearted girl who shouldn't be out in the rain, and Luke makes it about halfway to Mooresville in the jeep before the skies finally open up and soak him with cold rain.

* * *

Daisy is not nearly as clever as she thinks, and Luke is an idiot. Caught between them, he's not about to be listened to, so he just keeps his mouth shut and offers Luke a towel that his sopping wet cousin is quite certain that he doesn't need.

"Daisy." It's that military voice, the one that gets people to listen and do what it says, even when they don't want to. Works on everyone from Bo to Boss Hogg, but it's wasted on Daisy, who has no intentions of listening to anyone. "It's lousy out there."

She spent the whole trip from Clemmons to Mooresville planning the meal she wanted to cook. Something she's been wanting to try for months, but back in Hazzard she's limited by what's available in the Rheubottom's store, not to mention Jesse's palate after a lifetime of eating homegrown meals. It's got one of those fancy French names that Bo didn't halfway bother to listen to, much less try to remember.

The main thing is, of course, that he has almost none of the ingredients in his apartment. Probably doesn't have the right cookware either, but she's determined and she's going out to the store. Alone, because Luke's wet and it's Bo's apartment and she's not at all subtle.

She's leaving the two of them alone.

He ought to be thankful. He ought to give her the keys to the General.

"Drive careful," he says, reaches into the pocket of the dress coat that he laid across the back of the chair when he came in, digs out the keys and hands them to her.

"Bo!" Luke complains, but he shrugs his shoulders. _You want to tell her no, go ahead._ Daisy waits for Luke's verdict with her hands on her hips and the keys dangling from her skinny fingers. Luke makes a sound that's somewhere between a huff and a raspberry, his lips flapping together as he sighs through them. Waves his hand through the air. "Drive careful," he echoes.

She laughs and comes closer – stands on her toes to kiss Luke's cheek without touching any other part of his wet body. Which is silly, because the next thing she does is turn around and head off into the rain.

"Luke," he says. "Get out of them clothes."

A raised eyebrow is all he gets in answer to that one. At least his cousin's rubbing the towel on his hair now. Must've gotten tired of cold water dripping down the back of his neck.

"We ain't got time for that, Bo," he gets informed.

Bo smirks right back at it, because he figures that if they were both dedicated to the task they'd have time for that and a smoke afterward. If either of them smoked.

"I got a dryer." He takes the three steps over and opens the pocket door next to the bathroom to reveal it, stacked above his washer. "You ain't got to be freeze."

"I ain't freezing." Of course he's not. "And I ain't sitting around in your living room," which is fine, but he's standing in what's now more like the dining room, since Bo rearranged the furniture. "Naked." And Bo can't blame him for that, what with the bay window right there and Daisy due back before he's likely to manage to get Luke's clothes dry.

He shakes his head, comes back to where Luke's standing. Puts his hands over Luke's and helps him dry his hair. Gets a dirty look because Luke doesn't need any help, but he smiles right back into it. Leaves Luke to fuss with his own hair and starts to pull at the buttons on his shirt. Not as dressy as what Bo wore today, but it's one of his nice, plain blue ones. No holes in it anywhere and Bo has to be careful not to pull too hard on the buttons; he doesn't want to be the one to damage it when he knows it's got to be Luke's Sunday best these days.

"Bo." It's his name, Luke says it a lot. More than anyone else he's ever known and more than half the time the tone of it isn't even nice. It's not particularly nice this time, either, it's about to tell him to stop, or they don't have time or—he doesn't care. It's not the saying of the name that matters, it's the way it conducts itself up through Bo's fingers, the way it rumbles and vibrates.

Bo looks up from his study of Luke's buttons, kisses those frowning lips because they're just plain silly. Upset at not being obeyed when they've given dumb orders.

"Either you let me take your clothes off," he offers. Because Luke hasn't moved or shoved him away, and if he really doesn't want to be naked he's perfectly capable of defending himself. "Or I'm going to have to shove you into the dryer with them."

Sarcastic smirk on Luke's face that just about dares him to try.

He slips a hand further down Luke's chest, pulling at the button there. Really ought to look down and undo it properly, but he'd rather watch Luke's face change from mildly amused to annoyed to scandalized as brute force does the job just fine. A little tickle of his fingers against the soft skin right at the bottom of his breastbone, hard muscle underneath, and Luke sucks in a breath.

"Come on," he says, taking a step back. "I got a robe you can wear." Gets a raised eyebrow for that, but he does have a robe. At the bottom of his closet, he thinks. Maybe jammed in a drawer or—

Luke winds up standing in his bedroom wrapped in a pale blue, store-bought, knitted blanket instead, his wet clothes doing heavy laps in the dryer. Bo worms his way closer by degrees until Luke gives in and opens the blanket to let him in, wraps his arms warmly around him. Bo's hand up on the back of Luke's neck and playing with the wet hairs there that are curling up into a knotted mess – the man never has taken the time of day to fix his hair. It would seem like something he might have learned to do growing up next to Bo and Daisy, both of whom have mastered the art.

Bo kisses him for being a mess. Or for being agreeable enough to let his clothes be dried for him or just because he wants to. Just short little pecks, but they get slower and softer, then Luke opens his mouth to let him in. Tips his head and mumbles something that vibrates between them. Bo figures he could do this all day, just stand here wrapped in a blanket from his shoulders to his ankles, and kiss. Except for one thing.

He wiggles his free hand between them, brushes against the dampness of Luke's boxer shorts that he refused to remove, saying they would dry plenty fast on their own. Slides open his own dress pants that have been uncomfortable since he put them on this morning, pulls down the zipper and lets gravity take its course.

But between the accidental contact and his new nakedness, the kiss has to end and Luke gives him a skeptical look that reminds him of all that they do not have time for.

"They was itching me," he explains, gets an exaggerated nod of response. _Sure they were, cousin. And you never, ever drove a car loaded up with moonshine either, did you?_ "I know," he sighs. "Daisy ain't going to stay away but so long." Though he figures she meant for them to get up to something or she wouldn't have left at all.

Luke rubs his back with fists that are still wrapped up in the corners of the blanket, as some sort of apology or at least acknowledgement of his disappointment. A peck on his jaw line that neither finishes what they were doing nor starts anything new, then Luke drops his hands away so Bo can make his way over to the closet and find some jeans to put on. Luke sits down on his bed and tightens the blanket's fall across his lap. As if there has ever been anything like modesty between the two of them.

"Luke," he says as he's hopping around his left foot, trying to put his right foot through the correct leg of the jeans. "I know—today was about Daisy," but that's not what he means to say. Gets his right leg in and goes to work on the left. "I'm coming home for Christmas," isn't exactly it, either. He pulls the denim up over his legs, sets to tucking himself in, zipping, buttoning. "Do we got to tell Jesse right away?"

Given, that is, the fact that an announcement that his two nephews have been playing rough (and gentle) games with one another in the back forty since they were kids might just ruin the spirit of the holiday for the old man.

And look at that, he's out of things to do with his fingers. And his eyes have no excuse not to find Luke's.

But Luke's not looking back at him. He's staring off at Bo's driving trophies on the windowsill or out at the rain beyond, maybe at nothing at all.

"You ever brought a girl home, Bo?" he asks, but it's got to be one of those rhetorical questions. Luke's lived with him for most of his life and he knows that about the only girl that's ever eaten at their dinner table is Daisy, give or take the occasional new neighbor that Jesse invited. Bo just keeps his silence. "When I was first with Hannah," isn't exactly what he wants to hear next and Luke knows it. Kind of winces a little on one side of his face then turns and tips his head up to look at Bo. Shifts a little on the bed like he's creating space for Bo to sit next to him, even if there's always been plenty of room. "I didn't tell Jesse nothing. I figure he knew or at least that he'd pretty well guessed that I was spending some time with her. But I didn't go off telling him nothing until later." Until it got serious enough, most likely. "And maybe that's the way it's supposed to go." He shuffles again and Bo sits down next to him, since it seems to be what he wants. "You got to," Luke lifts his hand and makes a gesture out at nothing. Just broadly enough for Bo to get a look at the ripples in the skin of his belly when he sits like that, to want to explore them. Too bad, Luke closes the blanket up again. "Date first. Before you get your family involved."

Bo manages to keep the wild laughter inside him from bubbling out. Clears his throat and tries not to even smile. Caught somewhere between the knowledge that Luke's making an excuse (and a fine one, one that Bo can get firmly behind) for why they should spend more time together without telling their uncle, and the image of the two of them out on some kind of a proper date. Not to mention the part about not involving the family when really, three-quarters of them already know – it's funny. But Luke's serious.

Or he was. He looks at Bo's attempt at a straight face and snorts. Shakes his head and offers up that thing that's somewhere between a smile and a smirk all on one side of his face. Bo half wants to get up and look at himself in the mirror inside the closet door just to see what's so funny about his face, but Luke kisses him and makes him forget about wanting to be anywhere but where he is. One blanketed arm comes around his shoulders and they both do a little shifting to get the angle better. He puts a hand on Luke's face, feels the movement of his jaw when the kiss deepens, remembers how he could do this all day. The only thing that would make it better would be the open air by the drainage pond on their own land back home, a little sun and a lot of warmth.

And time. Which they are out of. Daisy's knocking on the front door and hollering to find out whether or not they are decent. The girl believes in love, and that's the main reason she's helped them as much as she has. She doesn't so much approve as just plain want them to be happy, and she sure as heck doesn't want to see them doing anything at all, other than acting like cousins.

Luke laughs and pulls the blanket tight around himself again as Bo gets up to go and reassure their girl cousin that they're just waiting for Luke's clothes to dry.


	17. Chapter 17

Clear plastic tubing – he feels the corner of his lip turn up at the memory. Not that long ago and yet it might have been a different lifetime, he and Bo bought the last copper tubing that Rhuebottoms ever sold. Must've been about five years back, and Rosco figured it meant they were moonshining again. Which they were, but the copper tubing didn't have anything to do with it.

Now the all the tubes that he can find are made of varying grades of plastic and he doesn't need any anyway. He's just wasting time.

But he's got to find something.

He's got almost a week. Sort of, it's Monday now, Christmas is Sunday and the store won't be open on Christmas Eve, so it's more like five days. Except it's already afternoon, which means more like four and a half.

Daisy was easy, but then, she always has been. A bow for her hair or a notebook to write down her dreams and she's all set. He doesn't know a whole lot about girls but he's lived with her long enough to have some idea what she wants for Christmas.

Though he figures if he was a good cousin, he would have gotten her something to gussy up Dixie. The poor girl's been separated from her jeep for over two weeks now, since they left it up in Mooresville rather than drive it home in the heavy rain. If Daisy'd gone alone she could have stayed the night with Bo and waited for better weather, but Luke'd had to get back before his pass expired. So they took the General and he can't say he's been sad to have the old boy at home again. (Rosco, however, hasn't been thrilled about it. Even if Luke's been mostly observing the traffic laws, the lawman's just waiting for him to lead a merry chase that ends up with a drowned cruiser and a soaked sheriff.) But he got Daisy a whisk as her gift because she complained about how between them, he and Jesse lost the one she left behind when she moved away (or Luke broke it and never quite got around to confessing to the crime) and that's going to have to be good enough.

Hammers, screwdrivers. Crescent wrenches and Luke picks one up. Feels the cool weight of it in his hand, but Bo doesn't want or need one of those. He's got a whole garage full of top-of-the-line tools available to him if he ever needs them.

The bell over the front door jingles like it has been, on and off, for the whole time he's been here. Maybe fifteen minutes, maybe a half hour. He hasn't been keeping track. Just wandering and looking.

Jesse posed more of a problem than Daisy, but in the end it wasn't really hard to pick out something for him. He's a practical sort of a man and appreciates the kind of gift he can use every day. Which is why Luke invested in a new pair of long johns, because the man wears them more than he doesn't anymore. Getting older and bad circulation or something, and he's always cold. Warm underclothes have got to be good for him.

Which leaves him with Bo. It's been years now since he had to get his cousin a Christmas gift and it seems like he's forgotten how. He's got four and a half days to get it right, but then again, Bo's supposed to be here by Wednesday afternoon, so it's more like two days. Unless he wants to be sneaky about it later.

Poor as a dust mote. He can still hear the way Lulu Hogg whispered it to Lucinda Harris in church that one autumn Sunday. The woman never has been any better at being quiet than she is at resisting chocolate, and the church has perfect acoustics, at least when it comes to catching a naughty parishioner in mid-whisper. The remark came that dusty October after they'd had to give up moonshining and the first cash crop they'd tried to plant hadn't fared all that well against the endless drought. Jesse hadn't put more than a couple pennies into the collection plate and while most of the town turned the other way to mind their own business, the Hoggs had been perfectly attentive to the way the plate passed from one to the next. Lulu hadn't meant anything by it, surely. She was just explaining what everyone else already knew. The Dukes were poor people made poorer by the loss of their trade.

It's not like anything's changed since those days. Dukes are still poor, unless they happen to be driving the NASCAR circuit. And renting an apartment with an electric washer and dryer right next to its bathroom, a microwave oven in the kitchen. As much space for one person as the old farmhouse has for four (now, and it housed far more in the previous generation) and enough furniture to fill it up. Nothing fine, but all of it new and—

Bo doesn't need a single thing Luke can give him. (Especially when he's already given Bo a place on the NASCAR circuit and the General Lee. Which is a bitter little thought that he's promised himself to stop thinking.)

Mops and brooms mark the end of the tool section, and he's about to enter the world of cleansers, then clothes. Which is really just three racks of odds and ends, and there's not much that would fit Bo's long frame anyway. After that comes footwear, simple work boots, loafers and running shoes and Bo doesn't need a single one of those.

The bell jingles again, another person has found that perfect gift for their friend or family member and gets to walk out the door feeling accomplished. Meanwhile Luke takes a minute to look at the selection of plastic Christmas trees. That, in honesty, no one in all of Hazzard needs when there are so many natural trees to choose from on the hillsides. As long as a person's got a saw and the wherewithal to use it, that is, and folks like J.D. Hogg don't. Still, the Commissioner's Christmas tree didn't come from Rhuebottoms, but some fancy store in Atlanta. At least that's the rumor.

It used to be easier when they were all poor together. A gift was something whittled out of a hickory branch or a glossy car magazine bought on a trip to Capital City, and a fancy gift was one of those two things with a bow tied on top of it.

He gets to the hunting gear, all in camouflage colors when he and Bo always hunted in whatever they had at the time – denim and corduroy, colors standing out against the forest greens and browns. Didn't matter, they were good hunters and an expensive coat wouldn't change that one way or the other.

Guns in a rack next to the gear, ammunition in a locked glass case behind that. Neither of which is going to help him one bit. He can't touch a gun unless he wants to spend this Christmas and the next four after it in prison, Bo's not really one to hunt with a gun, there are no forests to hunt up in Mooresville and even if there were, Bo's NASCAR schedule, even in the off-season, is far too busy for anything like a hunt. Not like the dirt track circuit they used to drive down here, where they could race, farm, hunt and still have plenty of time left over to get framed for robbing the bank on a regular basis.

No point in dwelling on the past, this is the life they live now. Or the separate lives they live, where Bo comes home for Christmas about once every three years and Luke can't find a single thing to put under the tree for him when he gets here.

The bell over the door jingles like a decrepit grandfather clock that keeps its own demented idea of time.

There are no compound bows here; there never have been. It was a slow and slippery trip to Atlanta just after Bo's fourteenth Christmas (and a particularly good season for holiday moonshine sales and deliveries) that led to the two of them getting those. But there are arrows here – aluminum, carbon fiber, even wooden – and he and Bo used to be Rhuebottoms' best customers for them. These days any arrows that the store carries mostly sit on the shelf and gather dust. Luke reaches out a hand to touch a red one, lightweight and slender. Nowhere near sturdy enough to take a load of dynamite. But it's pretty and would fly true.

By the time he hears Daisy's tongue click against her teeth, he's quit paying attention to the arrows and started staring at the ring on his pinky finger. His mother's ring, which Hannah returned to him that September night when he took her to the lake to explain that he couldn't marry her. It's a testament to his former fiancée's maturity that it's not currently getting fossilized in a layer of thick mud under about six feet of water. He's not sure why he wears it now, other than that he figures it's his until the day he dies. He'll never give it away again; it's not the kind of thing Bo could wear even if Luke did offer it to him.

Which is a silly thought. He and Bo could never get engaged, even if Luke wanted to, which he doesn't. It's just that he's learned his lesson about girls, whose hearts are so easy to break.

"Luke," Daisy says, and it's hard to tell whether the tone of her voice scolds him for wasting time staring at a ring, or for taking it off the girl's hand to begin with. She may have aided and abetted his and Bo's current situation, but that was for Bo's sake, not his. "What are you doing?" Or maybe he's in trouble because he was only meant to come over here for a few minutes, then he was supposed to go back over to the side of the store where the groceries are and help her do the shopping. He's not sure how long he's been here, but obviously she's had time to finish the task by herself.

"What?" he says anyway, all innocence. Just to watch her hands snap to her hips, her eyes widen then narrow back down.

"You was supposed to help me. I had to carry them bags to the General myself." And put them into the back seat through the open windows. No one in Hazzard (other than Boss Hogg if he's in the mood to graze) will bother to steal what is right there out in the open, but the squirrels might well get into it. They'd better get moving soon.

He reaches out to squeeze her upper arm through that tight red turtleneck sweater she's wearing. Not a lot of meat on those bones.

"Just helping you build some muscles?" he offers with a grin. But he's not Bo and his smile isn't enough to get him out of trouble. She grabs him by the elbow and pulls, starts to march him out of the store and jabs him in the gut with her elbow just for good measure. Maybe he shouldn't be helping her build anything at all.

* * *

The hot water tank gurgles and burps and that alone makes him feel like crying, even if he doesn't know why. They wouldn't be sad tears, he doesn't think. Not happy ones either, just nostalgic ones. Left over from every happy or sad moment that he spent in this house.

Bo doesn't cry, because he doesn't have time. He's already been home for almost a whole day and hasn't done anything about his problem. That sound means Luke's just turned on the shower and the rumble of water hitting the porcelain tub should deafen him to all the discussion out here in the kitchen. Which gives him about five minutes, really. The hot water tank only holds but so much and Luke's always been practical about his showers. Just to get clean, no need to be pretty. (Those so-blue eyes of his disguise a multitude of sins, from messy hair to a sneering face.)

"What," he asks out into the room. Jesse's standing at the stove, staring down into the pot of brewing coffee, like he can make the process go faster just by giving the pot a mean look. (That technique has always worked on his nephews at chore time, after all.) Daisy's kind of hovering around, setting this and that on the table, but mostly waiting for Jesse to get away from the stove so she can get serious about making breakfast. Looks like the morning rhythms aren't quite as smooth as they were before half of the Duke clan moved away. A few years back his girl cousin would have just told the old timer to sit down and she'd take care of the coffee. Now she looks sort of quietly distressed and fidgets. "Should I get Luke for Christmas?"

Daisy stops straightening things that were never in need of straightening in the first place, puts one hand on her hip and the other on her chin as her face takes on a dreamy look. She's thinking, but probably all wrong. Romantic notions and all that, but this is _Luke_ they are talking about. Anything romantic is likely to get him punched. (And Jesse very, very curious in a way that could lead to a bruised behind in addition to a bruised face.)

"I reckon," Jesse mumbles into the coffee that's brewing slowly just to spite him. Bo joined Luke for chores this morning and if he's not at efficient at them as he once was, he still halfway remembered how to do them. And Luke's twice as efficient as he needs to be, so there's no reason Jesse even had to leave his bed until after sunrise, but he'd come waddling out there, about ten minutes after Bo and Luke had gotten started, little white clouds puffing out of his mouth as he mumbled complaints about frost and morning and whatever else was on his mind. "You should have done your shopping before you come here. All them fancy stores in North Carolina," said with a certain amount of distaste, but the old man has no reason to care for the state. Aside from old moonshining trails carved into the ridges of the southern mountains, Jesse's only experience with the North Carolina is having taken his girl there to file divorce papers. In Clemmons, where the downtown has far too many buildings and cars to ever please a fellow who loves the wilderness that raised him. "You could have found something there. Now you're going to have to find something at Rhuebottoms."

Or just—on the ground. There was that one year he gave Luke a rock. But it had a streak of quartz running through the middle, so it wasn't a total disaster. Even if Luke laughed at him for two days and it wasn't even his fault, really. Jesse and Lavinia gave him two dollars to get presents for Daisy and Luke, but two dollars also bought him more candy than he'd ever eaten in his life. He found a feather for Daisy, and she had enough manners not to laugh at him for it.

But that was eight years old, when such things were cute and annoying and forgiven because nothing back then really mattered.

Seems to him that everything he's done since the age of fifteen has mattered a whole lot and he's done most of them wrong.

"He needs socks," Daisy pipes up and Bo's stare is hard enough to make her poke at the salt shaker that's not quite centered on the table. He almost laughs, even if he knows it's not a good idea. He bites his lip until there's the coppery taste or blood, and lets just a little extra air out his nose. Figures he plays it off well enough. "Well, he does," Daisy snaps back at him. If that salt shaker knew just how mean a look it was getting, it'd be cowering. "He's been mending them himself for years," a little flinch of guilt passes between them at that. "And he ain't really all that good at it. It's a wonder he ain't covered in blisters."

The man's got tough feet. He came back from the Marines that way.

And socks would be worse than a rock.

"He don't need socks," Jesse grumbles. The man should just have stayed inside and started on his coffee early. He's just about as charming and cuddly as a porcupine with pine tar stuck in its quills. (Bo's trying not to be bitter about the way he was thwarted in his planned attempts to steal a kiss or two from Luke during chores. Or maybe just to ask him why he's still sleeping in that bedroom converted out of a porch if he's no longer going to marry the girl he built it for. The two of them haven't been left alone together long enough for either to happen, yet.) "What he needs is some perseverance and dedication." Bo stands upright from where he's been leaning on the counter between Jesse and the water heater. Just far enough to be out of the line of fire if the oldster decides to react badly to his snicker at those words. Because Luke's plenty dedicated, even if it is to all the wrong things. "A little stick-to-it-ive-ness and he needs to stop being such a dang fool. Ought to go right back to that girl and tell her he don't know what come over him and he's sorry. If he was lucky, she'd take him back."

Oh. Well. Bo's got nothing to say to that and whatever sense of amusement he had is gone in a heartbeat.

He knew from the minute he met Hannah that he couldn't stand her and wanted her gone. What he's never had the chance to realize until now is that Jesse liked her and was perfectly ready to have her join their family. For the first time he has some idea of all the different ways in which breaking up with her must have been hard for Luke. And just maybe he understands why his cousin came to his home in Mooresville afterward, mad enough to spit.

He looks to Daisy for support. Not that she'd intervene on his behalf (and if she did, Luke's shower would come to an unpleasant and painful end when he got ordered out to the barn to take his whipping – still naked and dripping – alongside Bo) but he holds out hope that she might wink at him or offer up a small smile.

But she looks about as sad as Jesse is mad. The oldster's still over there mumbling things about damn fool boys who ain't got the pluck to do right by a girl and are cowards besides, while Daisy's getting ready to cry. Maybe she liked Hannah, too, or maybe she's been getting an earful about Luke's insensitive ways all along.

Could go either way, and it hardly matters all the same. Being home for less than a day has reminded him of how much upheaval his relationship with Luke is going to cause the family. Daisy's been his ally up until now, but he can't put her in the middle anymore. She's not so much in favor of her cousins being together as she's opposed to seeing them miserable.

"Dang fool," Jesse tells the coffee, but the water heater lets out another belch and they're all going to have to stop talking about Luke now, because he's on his way out of the shower.

* * *

There are a hundred Christmas stories and all of them end the same way. Sure, it looks like a disaster when Della cuts her hair off and Jim sells his watch, but in the end a short-haired girl can still love a watchless man and vice versa. Ebenezer Scrooge and Tiny Tim are both headed for disaster until they join forces and everyone has a merry Christmas. It's not supposed to matter what the gift is, just that it comes from the heart.

But books aren't life and though Bo's hair is long and pretty, a comb is not on his secret list of Christmas wants.

Dukes have their Christmas Eve traditions and they're not as tidy as Dickens'. There's no one to bless us, everyone, at the end, there's just four pleasantly intoxicated, sleepy family members, waiting for the stroke of midnight in the attempt to be the first to offer the others the joys of the season.

At least, that's how it used to go before Bo left and Daisy got married and Luke—well, Luke reckons he wasn't too much of a pleasure to live with for a while. Until Hannah came along and if she didn't fulfill him, at least she civilized him. She made him bearable.

_(Engagement looked good on Hannah. She wasn't ever beautiful but she wore engagement like a tailored silk dress and it flattered her in all the right ways._

_Even Enos, newly back in town after somehow managing to leave Los Angeles reasonably intact in his nearly two years there, noticed. Not that the newly reinstated Hazzard County deputy knew Hannah well or was in any position to compare her to her pre-engagement self, but he looked at her just a little too long and hard. Out of the shy corner of his eyes because she was Luke's girl and even if she wasn't, Enos would never want her. Rosco hiccupped whenever he saw her, but it was hard to say whether it was because engagement made her glow or just because Boss had explicitly explained the dangers of Dukes marrying and producing a whole new generation of Dukes._

_Hannah didn't so much show off the simple silver ring on her finger as make it easy to notice. Her constant complaints about the cold aside, she never wore gloves, never put her left hand into the pocket of her coat. Her gestures became more animated and one-sided and pretty much everyone in the county, even the folks in their isolated cabins on the hill or in the swamp, knew that Luke Duke had finally found a girl that would have him._

_Christmas season was just another excuse to practice being family. Luke expected Hannah to invite her sister to Hazzard or go up to Pennsylvania to see her the same as she had the year before, but when school let out the girl stayed right where she was, in that boarding house on Elm Street. Didn't make any moves to be anything but a Duke for the holidays._

_She got properly inducted, too. Luke would have blamed Jesse if he could, but he might just have been the one to move the right books off the shelf to get to the mason jar hidden in back. Dukes didn't make moonshine anymore and they sure as heck didn't transport it anywhere further than the distance from the hollow tree, hidden in the middle of a half a hundred other trees on their property, to the house. The bookshelf was one good place to store it, that one loose floorboard provided another and then there was the flowerpot in Jesse's bedroom. Though that last one only got used on cold nights and the anniversary of Lavinia's death._

_Christmas Eve had always started in church and ended in moonshine, even before Luke was old enough to drink anything stronger than hot cocoa. Once the Duke kids all got solidly into their teens, Christmas Eve got louder and more raucous than it ever had been before. After Bo left, they quieted by half and when Daisy and L.D. moved north the year after, the got dang near silent. But the moonshine was always there._

_That Christmas that he and Hannah were all official in their engagement wasn't exactly loud or wild. Mostly it was silly._

_The girl had never tasted moonshine, which ought to have been enough to disqualify her as a potential wife for Luke right there. But she stood ready to remedy that situation. Drank down too much on her first swallow despite warnings, and Uncle Jesse scowled at him and patted her on the back. "You'll be all right dear," he'd promised in that voice he saved for children and women in distress. He wasn't talking to Luke, but there was a warm nostalgia in the tone that reminded him of skinned knees and losing games of baseball._

_Hannah hadn't been discouraged; when her eyes had cleared and her little coughs stopped, she sipped again. More carefully, but with full commitment to getting drunk on the stuff. Which made her a true Duke and Jesse had that look to him like he always got when he talked about grandchildren. Like he could see the future and it was gold-tinted and beautiful._

_Luke took the jar from Hannah when she'd drunk down about an eighth, because the newly initiated never did know when to quit and he figured it would make a mess out of Jesse's pretty daydreams if she got sick all over the living room floor. He took a deep and bitter swallow of the stuff himself, the kind that came from years of practice, and handed the jar off to the old man who'd brewed it up in the first place. Jesse could finish it or not, and either way no one would be able to see a difference in his behavior. The man didn't so much get drunk as mellow._

_Around the time that Hannah started giggling and trying to crawl into his shirt with him, he took her out to sit on the porch swing. Jesse might have imagined all manner of grandchildren that would be blessed with his daughter-in-law's easy disposition and his nephew's strength behind the plow, but he didn't want to see them conceived right there in his living room._

_There was a brisk, December edge to the air that should have had Hannah wrapping up in more clothes rather than starting to pull them off, but the moonshine was warming her from the inside. Luke grabbed both of her hands and held them in his just to keep her from starting out here what she'd started in there. The fresh air was supposed to sober her up, but it wasn't working._

_She settled for whiskey kisses, for his arm around her shoulders and both of her little hands held by one of his, settled for giggles bubbling out between them like carbonation. Settled for taking her left hand out from between his to show him his own mother's wedding ring._

" _I love you," she said and it shouldn't have been strange. They were engaged, after all, but it had been one of those silently understood things up until now, that she loved him or she wouldn't have put up with him and his quiet, surly ways, wouldn't have accepted his ridiculous and stuttered proposal._

_She loved him, out loud and right there on his own porch, and that was a problem. Because he liked her and figured he could make her happy. Figured that most folks started out with less than liking and ended with something like convenience and at least he knew he could take care of her. Figured that they could be happy, even if he didn't love her and probably never would._

_But her saying it, that demanded an answer._

_Or didn't, she seemed content to kiss and be kissed, to giggle some more and to let her left hand creep up his shoulder to his hair. To his face and he could feel the cool metal of the ring along his jawbone._

" _You," she said, pulling back from the kiss. Slipping her skinny little right hand free of where he was holding it and bringing it up to his face as well. A two handed grip that kept him facing her, looking into as much of those amber brown eyes could be seen in the spillover of light from the living room windows behind him. "Are my hero."_

" _Hannah," he tried, because there were things he could do. He could marry her, he could be a good father to her children. He could give them all a reasonably good life in this house where he'd been raised, see that they ate well and were clothed and he could even keep them safe from the law of this region. But he couldn't paint an S on his chest and turn into the superman that she wanted to make him out to be._

_Didn't matter what he wanted to tell her, she wasn't interested in being deterred from her fantasies. Her cold fingers squeezed at his face, pushing all the skin forward until he was stuck in an awkward and surely unattractive pucker. Which made her giggle some more._

_He might not love her, but there were things about her that made her easy to care about. The way she was quiet and serious most of the time, but then she'd toss all that to the wind and act just as silly as a kindergarten teacher should, laughing and smiling. It wasn't the same as hurtling a car off a cliff with only a prayer to keep him safe against a hard landing on the bank of a river below, but it was something like fun all the same. (The fact that she was as messy as a kindergarten teacher should be – that was a bit less appealing.)_

" _Kiss me, you fool," she said, so he did. Because she was a lady and he wasn't so far gone from being a gentleman that he couldn't honor her request. Besides, her grip on his face pretty much made kissing the only thing he could do. "I want to see our room," she blurted when he really was expecting more kissing._

_The room – what he'd built because he didn't want to sleep next to an empty bed anymore – was something like a daydream to her. Whatever it was that girls wanted – a doll house, a fairy tale castle – that was the look on her face whenever she got a chance to see it._

_Taking her inside meant tiptoeing past Uncle Jesse, who wasn't sleeping, not at all, just resting his eyes for a minute like he did every Christmas Eve around this time, nearly empty mason jar on the chair-side table, his fingers still wrapped loosely around it._

_Down the hall and for once she didn't stop at the door and let her daydreams play behind her eyes, she walked right in and lay down on the blue and white quilt that covered the bed. Rolled over like an uncoordinated dog until she was on her side, suede boots still on her feet, heavy grey wool pants and her green turtleneck sweater frumpily covering the rest of her frame, but she draped an arm like she thought she was in one of those shimmery gowns from a magazine. She winked – or blinked, but the intention was there – and crooked a finger at him._

_But, asleep or not, Uncle Jesse would tolerate no premarital sex in his house._

_Luke offered a hand to pull her back to her feet; she tried to tug him down and in the end he gave rather than hurt her. Sat next to her and listened to her mumble things that weren't quite sensible, patted her shoulder and made sure that she was on her side when she fell asleep. She hadn't had enough to make her sick (he didn't think, but she was a novice to moonshine) but she'd probably be thinking derogatory things about him and his family traditions when she woke up. Or not, Jesse would probably offer her hair of the dog like he never did when his nephews overindulged._

_Luke ended up back in his old bedroom with the empty bed next to his and wishing he'd had more moonshine himself, enough to have made sleeping with Hannah seem like a good idea, or at least enough to bring his thinking to a stop. As it was he'd had just enough to make him crawl into Bo's bed instead of his own, even if the smell of Bo had long since faded from the sheets.)_

The Dukes are out of practice for this Christmas thing or the church schedule has got them all mixed up. No Christmas Eve service because Christmas falls on a Sunday anyway, which leaves the four Dukes with nothing to do but break into the moonshine early. Two mason jars worth because they're all supposed to be old pros, but Jesse's studying the insides of his eyelids in record time and Daisy's mumbling things about bed and morning and _don't let me spoil the party_.

He puts the empty mason jar in the sink and runs enough water into it that if Rosco shows up looking, there won't be any evidence for him to collect. Bo grabs the other, half full mason jar while Luke digs the flashlight out of the junk drawer and they head out the door, across the farmyard, into the barn and awkwardly up the ladder.

The night is still, with only Maudine's quiet nicker in her stall below them as she works out how she feels about her nighttime visitors. The smell of the straw and old wood, creaking boards as Bo makes his way to the far end, his shadow comically long and wobbly in the flashlight's beam on slanted walls. The loft doors get pushed open and Bo takes a step back. Sits on the floor and scoots forward slowly, carefully to the edge. He doesn't like heights but he does like to sit where he can get a good, clear view of the sky. Luke grabs a horse blanket out of the corner, then walks up next to him and plops down; Bo gives him a whimpering little look because he's forgotten to go gently so the floorboards don't vibrate and make his cousin feel unsafe. Luke wraps the blanket over their shoulders and an arm around Bo's waist to give him a sense of security and all is forgiven with a kiss that's too late in coming.

Bo agrees whole-heartedly that it's too late in coming; his hand at the back of Luke's neck pulls at him like it's going to make the kiss better or closer or warmer. Fingers digging in under his collar looking for skin. It's chilly out, but that's not why he shivers.

"Bo," he says into the kiss, which doesn't accomplish anything other than to give his cousin's tongue ideas about where it wants to be and what it wants to do. Luke can't say that he disagrees with the notion, just that—

Oh, hell, he lets his hand get to exploring Bo's chest, finding the space between the buttons of his shirt, but there's just another layer of shirt under that. The hem isn't that far down, but then again.

"Bo," he repeats, pushing against that broad chest to get them separate. He has nothing else to add that that, just _Bo_ and the panting that follows. His cousin's not saying anything either, what with how he's catching his own breath.

Three days. Bo's been home since Wednesday afternoon, and this marks the first time they've been genuinely alone, between finding and cutting a tree, decorating, visiting, getting dragged to town by Daisy – one thing after another has kept them relatively honest men. Nothing more than stolen pecks of kisses during chores, a fleeting touch of hands that's meant to look accidental, and now, finally, this. It's one thing to miss Bo when he's on the other side of the state border, and another to miss him when he's right here.

The want and need in the kiss was too much. They can't do this here.

"Can we go somewhere?" proves that Bo understands full well why he has been shoved away.

Luke shakes his head and pulls the blanket a little tighter around them. Now that they're not pressed together, the chill is setting in under his skin. "It's Christmas Eve." And tomorrow's Christmas; they can't go running off on their kin. "And it's cold." Which limits what they're going to be willing to do on a reasonably deserted patch of dead grass in the lost corners of their own property.

Bo huffs like a four year on the verge of a temper tantrum over the treat he's being denied, and scoots back from the edge. The blanket is scratchy, not exactly comfortable where it touches skin, and a little threadbare. Not the most comfortable, but it's warm and when Bo takes it with him as he scoots, Luke figures he'd rather have it than not. He stands the flashlight on its butt end on the floor and follows Bo to the corner he chooses to huddle in. Settles down close and watches Bo stare at the circle of light and dimmer rings that spread out around it on the boards overhead.

"Luke," Bo says, and never stops his distant staring. Never finishes his sentence either and Luke snickers because Bo looks so thoughtful, but it can't be that. It's never been that in all their lives. (Except when the thoughts were about girls, and Luke doesn't want that to be the case tonight.) He knocks his shoulder into Bo's to get the inevitable pout off his face.

"What?" he says to remind Bo that he's the one who started this thus far fascinating conversation.

"Thanks for the belt buckle. I mean, I like it." Luke snickers again at how hard his cousin had to work at appreciating the gift he finally gave in and bought for him. Went up to Percy Johnson's place in High Ridge and asked him what he had up for sale. Percy's "art" isn't the kind of thing that can be found in a store, made up out of scrap metal from the dump and embellished by a half-crazy imagination. But hours in Rhuebottoms hadn't done him any good, so Luke had gone looking for something unique that would give Bo the flavor of home. Maybe even make him want to come back. "I really do," Bo insists.

"It's better than that plain one you been wearing around Mooresville. I bet them boys don't know the half of what Hazzard County's like when you don't even look like you're from here no more." All those tee shirts with logos from local businesses that he wears, that fancy suit, his hair less blonde and cut almost as pretty as a girl's. There's almost no sign of his farm boy cousin left. "Anyway, Percy said it's smelted from the grill of a 1950s, black Coronet that probably outran a thousand revenuers, so I thought you'd like it." He might have wanted it made into the shape of a bull instead of a sand-dollar, but then again it was three days before Christmas and he just had to take what was there. The turquoise studs hadn't meant much of anything to him either, but that bulk of it came from a moonshine runner's car was the most important thing.

"Thanks for the knife," he adds almost as an afterthought. "Old one was getting dull." It really was, and a little rusty, too. But then again, he hardly uses it anymore, either. It's been a while since some tough talking stranger, hired by Boss Hogg to steal something-or-other, has seen fit to tie him up. Driving around town in a pickup truck with Hannah must not have made him nearly as interesting a target as being in the General with Bo does.

Bo leans in to kiss him again; it's better than their stupid conversation. About presents that they fussed over too much, maybe. Tried too hard to get something perfect when really, all they wanted to give each other was this. Bo's hand pulling at the back of his neck again because it's hard to get close enough sitting side by side. It's easier with girls who are willing to crawl right into your lap, but with Bo—

Hand working its way down his collar again, other one dragging knuckles first against his shirt front. Luke's hand on Bo's knee because that's what he can easily reach, rubbing up his thigh then back down. The rustle of denim, the feel of Bo pulling at the back of his head, asking for more or better, or—necks just aren't that flexible.

"Bo," he ties to say, doesn't work too well. More pulling, shoving, the knee under his hand shifting and then Bo's kneeling in front of him. Too tall, leaning down to kiss him, hand on the back of his head to protect him against splinters in the beams around them. Other hand on his chest, shoulder, and pressure. Blanket forgotten, caught behind Luke in uncomfortable bunches as he gets pushed back and down and—

No. Luke plants his own hand against Bo's chest, pushes him back.

Bo lets him go, sits back on his heels. Sighs in that cranky, fed up way that he has since he was a kid and Daisy tried to tell him what to do. _Daaaaisy,_ he would whine. And then, _Luuuuke, tell her she can't tell me what to do_. Which worked about as well as trying to reason with a hungry coyote with his sights on a chicken coop.

"Ain't there some way we can—" but Bo already knows the answer. Unless they're willing to go downtown and rent a room in the Hazzard Hotel for a couple of hours – which would raise more than a few eyebrows when everyone in this county knows they've got a house not fifteen miles away and no reason to rent a room together – there's no more they can do than just a little kissing.

It makes him wonder why, instead of trying to get himself up to Mooresville, he was so all-fired eager for Bo to come to Hazzard for a holiday.


	18. Chapter 18

He's out of practice and the pew under his backside knows it. It's punishing him with its particularly firm seat and low back that hits him at just about the bottom of his ribcage. Lavinia would have said it serves him right about the bruise he figures is getting formed across his back, since he's supposed to be sitting up straight. But Pastor McCorkle was denied his Christmas Eve service and is making up for it by doubling the length of his Christmas morning sermon. In the time they've sat here, three crying children have been carried out by tense mothers, Emma Tisdale has started fussing with her shoes, Daisy's hair has gone flat and even Jesse has settled into something that could be called a slouch (were he young enough to be scolded, that is).

Bo has spent plenty of time sitting since he's left Hazzard. Sitting, but the world outside his stock car windshield moves fast and in glorious color, while here in the church he's been stuck staring at the backs of the same heads for what feels longer than any race he's ever driven. Looks like Barbara Ann Decker has taken to being a blonde and old Mr. Carney could have made good use of a comb, and Bo can't help but feel like his critical older cousin, categorizing all the flaws around him. Give him a few more detailed parables booming from the pulpit and he'll be complaining about the width or a tie or length of a hem, the pattern of a dress or cut of a suit when he really couldn't care at all about any of it.

And wouldn't have a leg to stand on, anyway. Before driving down to Hazzard, he dug through the tangled clothes in his closet to the back corner where his threadbare brown suit was hung. It came with him to NASCAR as his Sunday best and he's never worn it since that first meeting with sponsors when Doug Reed made it pretty clear that he needed to go out shopping, immediately. _Get something in a business gray_ , had been his exact words, _and a gold-colored wristwatch, too_. Now Bo has three tailored suits, and none of them feel as right against his skin as this unfashionable brown one that he's been breaking in since he was sixteen.

"Amen."

It's about damn time. Then again, that's not exactly the right sentiment when the walls around him are full of stained glass and the book in front of him is doing its best to tell him how to behave. Everyone stands as Bo looks around for wanton bolts of lightning that might strike him, and there she is, right in the middle of his sight-line: Hannah.

Jesse shoves at him from behind when his movement stalls, but it's not his fault. Luke's stopped in front of him and there's a pew on either side, so he's got no place to go. The only one of them that's still walking is Daisy, who steps right up to Hannah and says hello. Throws in all the pleasantries of nice to see you, it's been a while.

That last part gets Luke moving again; it wouldn't do to be caught shrinking back from the woman whose heart he broke. (Not that it's going to matter; all of Hazzard's going to be talking about how he left her high and dry and isn't that just like a Duke boy. Bo's name will get dragged down right alongside Luke's, but that's the way it's always been. If one Duke boy is a scoundrel, the two of them together are a pair of rotten ne'er-do-wells.) Luke greets Hannah, tries to kiss her cheek but gets an ear or hair instead. She's plenty cordial in a tone that wavers a little in the middle of her hello-and-Merry-Christmas. The girl's still in pain.

Bo's next in this impromptu receiving line for a wedding that never happened. He only met her once so he figures a simple _hi_ ought to just about cover the entirety of what he has to say to her. It's not sufficient, he realizes, when her eyes fix on him – funny color to them that's not exactly brown or yellow, but caught somewhere in between, and they're the prettiest part of her – and offer him a sincere Merry Christmas that's full of something like earnestness and significance and good, old-fashioned sadness. He knows that look, the feel of her fingers patting his arm.

_We should get together sometime_. It's what girls say to him after Luke has dumped them. We should get together, which really means I want you to explain the unexplainable and tell me why I wasn't good enough for Luke. Or tell me how I can get him back.

It's a long-ingrained habit in Hazzard girls, and they know what comes after it, too. It's the reason it was so easy for the Duke boys to pass the pretty little fillies back and forth back in those days when they were pretending not to want each other. When he and Luke slept in the same room, not four feet apart, and tormented each other with the tales of their conquests, he'd explain to each tearful young lady, _it's not your fault,_ _my cousin's just a jerk_ , followed by a sympathetic arm around her shoulders. A squeeze and a kiss on the cheek, fingers playing in her hair until she forgot all about that mean old cousin of his and started touching him back.

Hannah is a little too sincere for all that; he figures she just wants to know what she did wrong. Which is an easy question and yet it's far too hard and then Jesse's there to take over. Which is just as well. If Bo stands there a whole lot longer he's going to start babbling about how sorry he is and that's not going to help anything. He leaves Jesse to offer up whatever wisdom there is in that whitened head and follows after Luke down the aisle. He can't explain why he feels sad, so he doesn't even try. Just steps out into the bright sunshine of a surprisingly warm Christmas afternoon.

(Still, not quite warm enough to allow for a 'wrestling match' in the hay.)

Luke's not looking too happy either, and it annoys him. Even if it shouldn't, even if he realizes that it couldn't have been easy on him to have his ex-fiancée's broken heart right there on display in front of his family and every single gossip in town. By the time the story makes it to Monday morning it's liable to feature Luke breaking up with her all over again up in the pulpit with the entire congregation as witnesses.

But he's not the one who told his damn cousin to go getting serious about a girl like that.

_(Her name was Susan and she wasn't exactly the typical NASCAR groupie. She had plenty of interest in the circuit – she fiddled around some with cars herself, she said. Not so much driving – though she could do that well enough, he found out later – as tinkering around under the hood._

_And though he'd always figured that lady mechanics ranked right up there with men having babies, she was different. Quiet, sure of herself and no need to brag._

_It was Cale that introduced them. She'd been apprenticing with the Ranier-Lundy team in the garage, but there were no permanent jobs available for her, so he'd brought her over to the Reed team's garage and introduced her around. Doug Reed expressed the same basic opinion of female mechanics as Bo always had and besides, he pointed out, there were no openings in any of Reed's pit crews (even if there were). By the time Cale disappeared with Doug to bicker some more, every one of the guys in the garage had asked Susan to join them for one kind of a date or another, and Bo had won the honors._

_She wasn't so much pretty as striking with her dark hair and light eyes. She wore her jeans well and handled her liquor even better. She was smart enough to be annoying and funny enough to be forgiven. He liked her, liked the way she wasn't in awe of him or intimidated even if sometimes he thought she could stand to be a little less quick with her words._

_And in the right light, if he'd had a few drinks and stared hard enough to make his eyes blur, he could forget who she was. Or, more accurately, who she wasn't._

_Which was most of why he saw her again. Three times total before she would come back to his apartment with him, and that time all they did was turn on his oversized television and watch sports with a beer each. By the time she was getting known as his girl (and still trolling every North Carolina-based NASCAR team in search of a job) they'd been seeing each other pretty much exclusively for more than a month._

_It wasn't a match made in heaven. They disagreed plenty, and her temper was on a slow-blow fuse while his was quick, so just about the time he was calming down, she was building up. But being with her was better than the near-anonymous encounters with groupie-girls that had peppered his weeks since he first hit the circuit, and far better than being alone._

_Sex came late to the party. Almost two months in and she finally let her guard down enough to get naked with him. She was good enough in the bed, lithe and adventurous, nothing at all like passive. He reckoned that she was a worthy partner and really, he should have been head over heels._

_And yet it was a complete relief when she broke it off with him and took a job with the Wood Brothers team up in Virginia. Otherwise, things might have gotten serious and he had no idea how he would have handled that.)_

Enos makes his way over to say his Merry Christmases and to make sweet cooing sounds over Daisy's dress and the hair she curled this morning, though it seems to have straightened itself in the meantime. Not that Enos cares; he'd probably think she was perfect even if she were bald. Rosco, who isn't known for his attendance at church, follows after Enos, all full of tiddly-tuddly and those-dang-Dukes. (But his mother is talking to Emma Tisdale not fifteen steps away and Rosco seems plenty happy to have put a little distance between them. Which is, no doubt, a naughty-naughty for which he will be punished later.)

Bo takes to discussing the finer points of his NASCAR season with Rosco and Enos and it's a sad day when he'd rather spend time with the Hazzard law than with Luke. It's not long before more people join them, Cooter and L.B., Dobro and Brody and then the girls. He has to work to remember their names; he knows them better by their shapes. Can remember who his hands have touched and who they haven't, but he's lucky enough to be able to get away with greeting them all as 'sweetheart.' Their names don't much matter anyway when all they want is to be close to a NASCAR driver. They're no different from the gaggles of girls that gather by the rail on a track and beg for autographs (and kisses, and offer up their phone numbers like he's a trick-or-treater on their porch with an adorable costume and an open bag).

He's not the only one drawing a crowd, it seems. Luke's is smaller, grayer, meaner. The widows are on him like flies on road kill. If Bo was a good cousin he'd go over there and try to save him. Luke would do it for him, even if they were in the middle of the worst fight they'd ever had. But in truth, there's not a lot Bo can do for him. A second Duke boy will only make Luke look guiltier of whatever it is they think he's done to Hannah. It's going to be a job for Uncle Jesse, once he gets himself free of the pastor, who has him held up at the door, pumping his hand.

It's Christmas. Everyone ought to be in a hurry to get home to their meals, their presents. It's only a couple of hours before the visiting starts up, people leaving their houses to invade someone else's, traveling in packs and finding anyone at home that they can. It's the sort of chaos that starts early and sucks up the entire afternoon and into the evening, but then again, today no one seems eager to leave the church yard.

And look at that, Hannah's shaking off Daisy's attempts to talk to her and making a beeline through Hazzard's groupies, toward Bo. She always seemed sort of shy and quiet before, but right now her face is more like determined (and he wonders what it's like to be a kindergartner who has gotten into a closeted stash of paste and made a mess with it – to be that little and see that look coming at you) as she creates a path for herself through the silly and flirty pack of girls.

"Uh, hi Hannah," he says when she's right up next to him and there's no ignoring her. He can feel the attention that's turned on him, not just by the girls in front of him, but by the widows who have been giving Luke what-for, by Luke himself. By Jesse and the pastor and just maybe God above.

This, right here, is a test. He's always been above average at failing those.

"What can I do for you?" He smiles, but then he always smiles. Everyone he meets gets a smile and why should Hannah be any different? And yet he can't shake the feeling that he's failing already. It's too damned quiet, the whole world is focused on them. Even the crows have quit cawing and must be sitting on their branches just waiting for Bo to do the wrong thing.

"Hi," she says back. "It's nice to see you again." Oh, there's no way to avoid screwing this up. The girl's not flirting with him, she's much too serious for that. She's earnest and intense and somehow makes this sliver of civilized conversation feel like a confusing infidelity. Should he not be talking to her because she was Luke's fiancée and cousins don't to that to cousins, or should he not be talking to her because he's Luke's… what, lover? Should he not be talking to her because the gossips will have the town nattering about how Bo stole her from Luke and bedded her before sundown?

The truth is, no matter what sort of infidelity it might be, he can't not talk to her. He also can't become her confidant or explain Luke to her. (He could, in all honesty, say he only halfway understands Luke himself.)

"I was wondering," she just about whispers, and it's obvious now if it wasn't before that she's not from here. Saying things quietly only makes the gossips of the town listen that much harder and make up their own words to fill in for any they might miss. Better to shout out all your secrets and get chastised for being loud. "If we might be able to talk sometime."

He can feel his grin go a bit green and sickly around the edges. But all of Hazzard, including Luke, is watching him with all due intensity and morbid fascination. What with how Bo Duke has never said no to a girl in his life.

And has no idea _how_ to say no.

"Sure, sweetheart," he says, and the gasps around him don't even try to disguise themselves as anything else. Maybelle Tillingham, who had been at the front of the Hazzard girls vying for his attention, takes a step back. Like she expects Luke to come marching up here and start a brawl. (And if he did, Bo's well-past-nervous and bordering-on-hysterical brain wonders, who would he hit – Bo or Hannah?) "I reckon I'll be at the Boar's Nest on Friday night." Most likely Saturday, too, what with it being New Year's Eve. Then again, that one might be spent at home with family. Probably safer if it was. "And I'll make sure to save a dance for you. Each one of you," he says to all the ears listening in on this conversation. The girls, the widows, heck, even Luke.

Hannah's face never stops being earnest, but the hopeful raise of her eyebrows is gone and her chin drops. "Thanks," she mumbles and he can be pretty sure that wherever she is on Friday night, it's not likely to be the roadhouse.

Jesse's suddenly at his side, firm grip on his upper arm that reminds him of being a youngster that mouthed off to the Sunday school teacher. _Come right now and don't you fight me, boy_. He makes a sad little face about having to leave the girls behind, figures it's convincing enough. Lets himself be pulled toward the street even if he's far too old to be dragged that way. (At least it's his arm, not his collar. There was that one time that he'd dug in his heels against being pulled away and Aunt Lavinia had had to mend his Sunday shirt in more than one place – that might have been the one time he took a whipping without Luke there at his side. That time he'd caused the trouble all on his own. Both he and Jesse have learned a few lessons since then – Bo makes sure to keep Luke at the forefront of any trouble, and Jesse grabs hold of body parts instead of clothing.)

Luke's arm gets grabbed at some point along the way, Jesse's head tilt indicating that Daisy should join them in their sad little punitive march. Whippings for everybody.

"See you at home," has a menacing ring to it when Jesse releases them in front of the General, then leads Daisy over to the pickup.

Fortunately, Bo beats Luke to the driver's side. He knows a few shortcuts that take far longer than the direct route. Luke would have gone straight home, but Bo operates on the theory that it's always better to let Jesse's anger cool a bit before he gets the chance to see their faces (or their backsides) again.

* * *

The Dukes are visitees, not visitors this year, which is Bo's fault no matter how you look at it, but it's doesn't make Jesse any less testy about the whole thing. By the time Bo stops goofing off and otherwise wasting time, there are already extra cars in their farmyard with Daisy on the front porch welcoming the Pattersons and Thomases. Used to be that the Dukes farm was everyone's first stop, but that was back when they could expect to have a sip of moonshine before moving on to the McKnights down the road, with the ugly children and the smelly dog, not to mention fruitcake as hard as concrete. It always helped to have a little libation before making that trip.

Now it's get everything to do with NASCAR talk. The men want to hear an exhaustive narrative covering each race from the past three years as told from the inside of the car. (And Mr. Patterson really should know better, as Bo's former tenth grade teacher. The boy never was any good at narratives or memorizing anything.) The women just want to touch Bo. His face, his hair, the fancy watch that clings to his left wrist most days.

More folks come and there's a bottleneck in the archway between the kitchen and living room. Comers and goers all stuck in one place because no one really wants to leave, not when Bo's telling tales just as tall as he is, and the McKnights are waiting just down the road. Daisy's hung mistletoe in the doorway, probably in hopes that Enos might stand there long enough for her to get next to him. (Which is unlikely at this point since he hasn't even arrived yet and there maze of people he'd have to navigate would make it embarrassingly obvious what he was up to.) Spontaneous kisses break out when unrelated folks realize they're caught under it – no fun to kiss your own husband or wife on Christmas after all – until someone (looks like Jill Duggan to him) gets the fine idea to pull Bo up from his seat on the arm of the couch to stick him under there. Blonde magnetism and mistletoe are a deadly combination and the best thing Luke can do is get out of the way.

He finds a nice little gap in the throng and makes his way over to the mantelpiece. Daisy's across the room from him, hand over her mouth and giggling at the way the ladies are swarming Bo. Jesse's trying to offer everyone a drink of eggnog or a slice of pie (which is probably already gone, but it's been a while since the oldster has been able to get back into his own kitchen to see that with his own eyes) and getting solidly ignored by everyone. Luke looks over at him and rolls his eyes about the way Bo's holding court. Doesn't get an answering wink, just a dirty look that reminds him of how he ruined Hannah's Christmas, her holiday season and what the heck, her whole life. And he's not about to be forgiven any time soon.

But at least, Luke figures even as he stews in his corner, the balance of the family has been restored. Back in the summer, Jesse lectured Bo and left Luke out of whatever the matter was then. Now they're back to normal, where no matter what kind of havoc Bo causes, it's Luke on the receiving end of the lowered white brows over the steely blue eyes and flattened lips.

Eventually Boss shows up, earlobe first, getting dragged in by Lulu. Somewhere between his cigar smoke and his greedy politics, he manages to clear the house of most of the visitors, then gets himself sat into Jesse's easy chair while Lulu does her fawning over Bo. Big old jowls pouting because he doesn't want to be here, especially if the pie's already gone.

Eventually, Lulu gets firmly ensconced in Daisy's room to admire or cluck her tongue at the clothes that came back with her from North Carolina, and Boss starts getting mean. His driver, Alex, is stuck in the kitchen with Emma Tisdale, who is talking his ear off while waiting for Jesse to get free enough to notice her. The oldster's doing his best to look busy serving the sum total of about five people that are still left in the house, none of whom want another cup of eggnog. He even stops for a moment to talk to Luke, just so he won't have to deal with the woman in his kitchen. Doesn't say much, just suggests that it would be good to get to bed early, what with tomorrow's chores waiting for them.

There's hardly anyone still visiting when Enos shows up, dressed in brown, and he might as well be naked for the shock that runs through the house at the sight of him in civilian clothes. It's good to have him, though, it gives Boss someone specific to yell at and takes the pressure off the rest of them.

It's long past dinnertime when the Dukes finally have the house to themselves again. Daisy mumbles something about cleaning up tomorrow, which just gets added to the list of punishments Jesse's racking up for him. For tonight, it's Christmas and they all settle down to a quick meal of sandwiches. Luke offers to do the dishes while everyone else goes to bed. Bo considers lingering, but catches on to Jesse's mood and decides against it. The old man glares at his back for a while as he washes, but must get bored, because by the time Luke's done, he's gone. Just a series of closed doors with light coming from underneath and even the bathroom is empty. Everyone's done for the day, leaving him to find his own way to bed.

In his and Hannah's room.

He has a habit of waking up somewhere within in the neighborhood of two in the morning, some twisted remnant of being awakened for his turn to take watch in his Marine days. Generally doesn't stay up longer than the time it takes to realize that he's not camping on the muddy ground of a country on the other side of the world.

Which is how he knows it's relatively early when the cold air steals into his blankets with him, because he's slept straight through from dinner until that happens. He resists acknowledging the cold, might mumble a thing or two about closing the window that doesn't make any sense when he's the one that's always opening it. Bo doesn't like the cold and never has, which is a dumb thought because he's not in his childhood bedroom with Bo, and hasn't been for years.

The cold gets colder and hot all at once, and that's enough to wake up whatever part of his brain is still dozing. Bo's clammy hands pulling on him, trying to get closer or roll him or—

It's not going to work, Bo's got no leverage and Luke's pretty well wallowed into the mattress that's not exactly firm to begin with. Cold feet against the side of his calf, looking for warmth or closeness and it's an unpleasant feeling.

Not to mention that it's a bad idea. Lousy one, two Duke boys in one bed, one turning over to make room for the other, arms wrapping around and a kiss without intent other than to soothe and to settle. To spend the night while their already unhappy (and therefore likely to be restless) uncle sleeps just down the hall. In a bedroom that's just two away from the one Bo just left and did he remember to close the door when he slipped out?

It's monumentally stupid, and yet Luke doesn't do anything more than to shift, shuffle and hold on with both arms. Because it's just a bed and it was only about a dozen steps, but for the first time since that day when his angry cousin shoved him to the ground to get him to stop pining for Amy Creavy, Bo has chosen him. Over his fear of Jesse's wrath, over whatever the guys at NASCAR would do to him if they knew, over anything at all, Bo has come to him.

* * *

It's—Bo would swear he was sleeping but then again there's movement all around him. Slick, fast, his hands are grabbing on to anything at all, and then it's just the bed, just Luke that he's digging his fingers into. Shoulder, arm, maybe even chest, he can't be sure. Just knows that he needs to hold on with all his might.

It's still dark, pitch black, but it has that feeling about it. Well-rested, which means time to get up. Even if he recollects the night being mostly fitful, lying in his old twin bed and remembering the look on Luke's face as he stood by the fireplace and watched the girls flock around Bo, touching his hair or his elbow and asking for kisses under the mistletoe. Acting like he was a different person than the gangly teen they hardly took notice of or the skirt-chaser they all grew tired of after a while. His cousin's eyes watching every part of it with the sort of scrutiny that'd made his shirt stick to his chest with sweat because the test hadn't ended with the way he'd handled Hannah. And it might never end, which gave him all the opportunity in the world to fail it.

The bed had been too small or he'd been too big – maybe just too miserable – and he couldn't get comfortable. The rest of the house had sighed, settled and slept before he'd made up his mind that he was an absolute fool.

There were rules hanging all around him like nooses upon which he could so easily hang himself. Luke's rules, Jesse's, Hazzard's. Georgia's, NASCAR's, federal laws and international ones and since when did Dukes play by the rules? Three years ago, Luke had told him that one of them had to leave, had gotten Bo the offer and sent him on his way with all manner of rules to keep him from coming home. He'd done all that Luke claimed to want and what good had it been? Gave them three miserable years apart and they're only now figuring out how to be together.

There's a rule about beds, too. Specific beds, or roofs over beds and who owns said roofs. And then there are the unspoken rules – the kind that he and Luke excel at – about who sleeps in which room, behind which closed doors. And like an idiot, he's followed those rules just like all the other rules that haven't done him any good. He ought to be ashamed to call himself a former moonshiner, a resident of Hazzard and a Duke, for all that he's become so rule-abiding.

So he got up out of the bed from his childhood, tiptoed across the floor, out the door and down the hall. Opened a door that didn't used to be there when he last lived here, then he pulled back the covers and slid into a bed that he'd never been invited into. Got welcomed with a kiss and arms around him, a shoulder for a pillow and all was good.

But now it's time to go, Luke's shoving arms are telling him. Before someone wakes up and finds them like this. It's warm here and comfortable in an awkward sort of way where the bed's too soft, the body under him is too hard and there's too much sweat between them. About as perfect as things can be for a pair of Dukes, and he hates to give it up. Which is why he clings to Luke with all the strength in his fingers, and wraps a leg around both of Luke's as an anchor. It's a fool's game that he ought to have lost already; if, that is, Luke really wants him out of the bed.

He lets go of what might be Luke's wrist and grabs for something more substantial like his waist, an attempt that's thwarted by his cousin's straight up-and-down build and the sweat on his skin. He giggles at his failure, giggles a little more as Luke takes advantage of it to shove him to the edge of the bed. Movement has to stop there – if he gets shoved any further he'll hit the floor butt first and make a hell of a racket. Daisy and Jesse will arrive on the run (the latter with his shotgun, and that's no good) followed by the livestock and just maybe Enos, if he's already on patrol and in the area. He laughs his victory, gets kissed to shut him up. He wraps an arm around Luke's neck, feels the fluff of his tangled hair against his skin. Kiss breaks, smell of morning breath where their faces are still close.

"You got to go," Luke tells him quietly, and the game is over. Because it's true, he's got to get back to his own bed before Jesse's old bones rouse him for the day.

"I'll be back tomorrow," Bo promises, offers up one last kiss and scoots out of the bed.


	19. Chapter 19

It's not a good song. Not if you ask him, but nobody has. Daisy's behind the bar, her fingers keeping time to it, and the dance floor might just cave in if the dancers' stomping doesn't ease up soon. But it's not a good song and they're just reacting to the amplified beat and bass. Most of them, anyway. Daisy probably likes the damn thing; it's Donna Fargo, whose career she used to admire.

Not as good as the Eagles or Waylon Jennings, but he hasn't got a spare quarter to stick in the jukebox and play something better. All his money's got to go toward the weak beer that gets served here, because Daisy won't run him a tab. Something about Boss docking her pay last time she did, so it's cash only for the Duke boys.

Bo probably has plenty of money and could be making sure that neither of them ever has an empty mug, but he's up there on the dance floor with the rest of the county's young folk. Keeping the promises made just outside of God's house on Christmas morning and dancing with one girl after another. Sometimes two at once, and whatever beer he's actually managing to put away seems to just get handed to him by one person or another. Celebrity has its advantages, Luke reckons. And takes another sip of the swill in his own mug.

The song changes, another female artist that might as well be Donna Fargo all over again for all that it sounds like her. The bass line is interesting though; it rumbles across the floor like a dozen galloping horses, reverberating to the four corners, one of which Luke has tucked himself into.

Muscle memory from all those years he spent here as a younger man, even before he was old enough to drink the watery beer. The rhythm of the music, the way it thundered up through his groin and it always led to fun places because some manner of sex followed. Not always good and not necessarily lasting for more than the amount of time it would take him to say hello and how do you do, but it would happen and there'd be a release.

Tonight it's more like torture after having Bo home for more than a week with nothing but kisses and curling up together in the bed for a few hours at a time, and he figures that someone needs to put on a slow song or just unplug that damned noisemaker.

"Heya, Lukas." Well, look there. It's Cooter come to distract him, with a beer in his hand and a red bow in his hair. Shades of the wild drunk man that he used to be. All that crazy has gone out of him now, most of it in the three years since Bo left. Funny how the whole world slowed down to a crawl, lost a lot of its gloss and stopped being much fun around that time. "This seat taken?"

Only by Bo, who is far too busy dancing to sit in it. With that dark-haired girl, what's her name? Betty Ann or something, Barbara Jean? What does it matter, there's a blonde waiting in the wings for the next dance and Luke doesn't remember her name, either.

He gestures loosely with his hand toward the chair that Cooter's already pulling out and angling to face the dance floor. _Help yourself._

"That boy's still got it, ain't he?" their friend hollers at him. Has to, the music is throbbing through the place like a racing heart; makes him wonder whether, if they played it long enough, all of them in here would have synchronized heartbeats to match the song. He knows they'd all be deaf. "You need to get him to give you his leftovers." Right, because what Luke really wants right now is a little charity and first pick of the girls his baby cousin discards. His eyes roll so far back at that suggestion that, as Aunt Lavinia used to scold, he ought to be able to see his own brains.

"You got something," Luke says, patting his own hair in the place where that cheap, shiny bow is stuck in Cooter's. Gets a silly little smile in return.

"Souvenir of a good time had," he gets informed. He doesn't want to think too hard about how the music probably isn't torturing Cooter in the same way it is him. Doesn't want to know who or what or when—

His face must be a little seasick, because Cooter laughs at him. Studies a smear of grease between his pointer finger and middle that the cursory hand-wash he performed before coming out didn't eradicate. "Naw, not like that," his friend clarifies. "Just a little smooch under the mistletoe," that's hanging in the vestibule entryway, and Luke's money (if he had any) is on Daisy having been the one to hang it. "With Mary Ellen. Then she stuck this on my head."

"Mary Ellen?" That's… he half wants to call it impressive and half wants to say it's annoying. Luke's always been the one that Mary Ellen stares at from across the room, regardless of who she's supposed to be with. She's cute enough, he's dated her once or twice and though she goes with other men, Luke's always somehow thought of her as faithful to him in her own backward way.

Cooter laughs at him. "Buddy-roe," he says. A yeehaw comes from the dance floor, loud enough to drown out the music for a second. Neither of them has to look in that direction to know who it came from. Cooter's smile gets that much broader. Everyone but Luke, it seems, is having themselves a fine time tonight. "You can't have it both ways. Either you is all respectable and practically married, or you is a scoundrel. Now that Mary Ellen, she was plenty sweet on you. But she give up when you got yourself all engaged and acted like an upright citizen. I reckon you could get her back if you can manage to stay single for a while."

Yeah, well. He's not single and there's no way Mary Ellen can ever know the particulars of the situation (and she wouldn't believe it if she did).

Meanwhile Bo's out on the dance floor with a blonde girl now, touching her in all the safe places where no one could ever accuse him of trying to take advantage. But even if he wasn't on his best behavior, even if he was grabbing at her all wrong, no one would think anything of it. Now if he were to be down here at the table, cuddling up to Luke like he was in the bed last night (and, a throb of the bass reminds him, will be again in a few hours) the whole place would get quiet and mean and dangerous for them both. Odd to imagine such a thing when they've always been considered the life of the party here, the beloved home-town boys doing good deeds in between defiling the town's daughters.

_("Hey look, it's Luke!" someone said from the general direction of the bar, as though it were the sighting of a rare and exotic bird. And maybe, in a way, it fit. He didn't want to think too hard about what kind of a regular he used to be, how the bartenders and waitresses could count on seeing him several nights a week and plenty of days, too. Because back then he'd been part of a package deal, Bo-and-Luke-and-Daisy, they're cousins, they travel in packs._

_Now it was just him and his poor old uncle left behind here in Hazzard and he'd gone all responsible. Got himself engaged and his girl didn't care for the noise and mess of the Boar's Nest (and who would, if they hadn't grown up with it, sticky floors and all) so Luke didn't come much anymore._

" _Hi, Luke!" That was Dennis, one of the Comerford boys that he'd raised barns and done other community work with from time to time. Not so much a friend as someone he'd known since he was two and just considered a part of the wallpaper of his life._

_He waved like a good boy but headed straight over to the low platform that had been erected to the side of the dance floor and found Ken at the back, fiddling with electrical cables._

" _Hey," he greeted. "Where's Dobro?"_

_The drummer crawled out of the tiny space he'd been occupying, placed a hand on the platform and stood up. Dust on the knees of his jeans and even more on his hands that he wiped on his shirt before offering the right one to Luke. "In the bathroom, making himself pretty. I told him not to bother. With you behind the microphone, he ain't going to get no girls to give him a second look anyways."_

_A kind man wouldn't have smirked at that little observation, but Luke wasn't feeling kindly. More like peevish, he was out of practice for handling the smell of heavy sweat mixed with raw alcohol that hung like cheap cologne in the air here. The smell that had raised him and now it left him a little light-headed._

" _He said Jimmy's guitar would be here?"_

" _Over there," he said, pointing toward the corner where the drum kit sat unassembled along with about three miles of cable and the red, electric guitar that Luke would be playing for the night._

" _You need any help here?" he offered, but Ken shook him off with a lopsided grin and pushed his sandy hair back from where the front of it kept falling into his eyes. He wasn't exactly pretty, but his hair flew when he smashed at his drums and the girls usually liked that well enough._

" _Naw," Ken said. "You just go pick at that guitar a bit."_

_Because that was the thing, the reason the respectable and grown up Luke Duke had agreed to come out to the roadhouse at all when he should probably be at home knitting socks or otherwise allowing himself to be domesticated. The Boar's Nest house band, nameless as it was and subject to being fired from their gig every week (except no one was paying them so no one knew who would have the authority to kick them out), had lost their lead singer and guitarist to some sort of out-of-town trip or other, and as he usually did under those circumstances, bass-player and mangler of backup lyrics, Dobro Doolin had called on Luke to fill in. Which he would gladly do, so long as equipment was provided because all he owned was a beat up old acoustic guitar that he might as well give to some kid in the orphanage for all that he played it anymore. But Jimmy's fancy, cherry-red electric guitar always felt weird in his hands, so he'd show up early and go off to a corner and get used to it._

" _Hi, Luke," she cooed, and he'd been so intent on running through his chords that he hadn't seen her coming._

" _Mary Ellen," he greeted back, favored her with half a smile. Her echoing grin was wide enough to show off her perfectly straightened teeth and wrinkle up her nose._

" _I heard you were playing tonight." Her skirt swished from side to side as she rocked, her hands held in front of her and she looked like a little girl. Like his youth, maybe, and while he hadn't meant to give it up, he figured it was gone now._

" _Yep," he answered and turned his attention back to the guitar. When Dobro called him up to the stage a few minutes later, he realized that she hadn't moved from the time he'd last looked at her, she'd just stood there and faithfully watched the way he picked at the guitar._

_The band didn't get paid, but they did get free drinks, handed up to them by Bertie, the waitress who worked most Saturday nights because she was just solid and mean enough to deal with the worst of the drunken men of Hazzard. Usually she didn't say much, just pointed to whoever it was that had bought a round for the band this time. But on the fourth round she smirked and told them that this round was for_ Lukie _, to entice him to come out and play more often._

_Mary Ellen wasn't a shy girl, not by miles. And she hadn't encumbered herself with a date this weekend, so she was free to buy him as many drinks as she wanted (finances permitting, and she wasn't a rich girl, so he figured one round had pretty much done her in for the week) and to dance as sultrily as she wanted to, right in front of the platform on which he stood. Up front at the microphone, rumbling out the low-toned lyrics to an old Johnny Cash song, and maybe it was the lights in his eyes, or the beer in his belly, but he found he liked looking at her. Liked watching until his eyes blurred and all he got was shapes and colors. She wasn't blonde but she wasn't dark haired, she had a narrow waist and a lot of leg and the more she moved the more he expected a yeehaw from her. Sweaty, long and lean and for moments at a time he could see Bo. Then Dobro would chime in with harmony in the wrong key and everything would be as it really was. Bo was still gone and Hannah was still waiting for him to come and get her after the set was done so they could go over to Cedar City for a late night snack of fast food burgers. And the girl in front of him was just a girl, a memory of the youth that he had somehow let slip away from him, even if he hadn't wanted to.)_

"That is, if Bo don't get her first," Cooter informs him pointing out to the edge of the dance floor where girls are lined up to dance with Bo. Mary Ellen's there in the shadows, far enough away from the rest of them that it's not clear whether or not she intends to dance. Either way, Bo's got her full and rapt attention as he swings yet another girl under his arm, his hair darkening as it sticks to his forehead with sweat, his unbuttoned and untucked yellow shirt swirling out around him with each move.

They really don't, he takes a minute to reflect, look anything like each other. Bo and Mary Ellen, that is.

"Of course," Cooter adds, meaty hand gripping around the glass mug of suds, not even bothering with the handle. He may not yet have slipped back to the same level of fool he was a few years back, but he's on his way. Give him a half dozen more beers and a chance to roll around on the floor at the bottom of a brawl and he'll be indistinguishable from his younger self. "Mary Ellen ain't the main one you got to worry about him stealing from you. You saw the way Hannah looked at him."

On Christmas morning, in front of the church, the minister, Jesse and God – yes he had. He knew what it meant, too, even if Cooter hadn't quite figured it out. It's an age-old game that he reckons his daddy and Bo's probably played long before he and Bo did. And it only works if the girls are willing participants. Luke never would have pegged Hannah for that, but it turns out she's not above it. Going to Bo for a little sweetness and sympathy, and maybe just to try to stir a little of Luke's jealousy. Might work, really. In truth, it could very easily work, but not quite like Hannah means it to.

And Bo never has been able to say no to girls in need.

Oh, he did a creditable job of putting her off on Christmas morning. Must've made her feel like a fool for coming forward like that, and she never has liked being embarrassed in front of Hazzard's women. Not when they like to gossip so cheerfully about newcomers, and no matter if she spends the rest of her life here teaching their children, she will always be a newcomer to Hazzard folk. But she's plenty persistent when she sets her mind to something, and though Bo's probably congratulating himself for having dodged a bullet, the girl will be back.

While he may never have loved Hannah, Luke's always cared about her and that hasn't changed. She doesn't deserve what he did to her. But she's dangerous all the same, because she's likely to keep asking uncomfortable questions until she gets terribly awkward answers.

"Hey," Bo pants, almost colliding with the table when his long legs bring him over a little too quickly. Been dancing too long; he's forgotten how to walk. He grabs Luke's three-quarters empty mug of suds and downs it like he's the one who paid for it. With cash, and really, there ought to be a rule against that kind of thing, the rich cousin drinking the poor cousin out of house and home. Then again, everything that's his has always been Bo's, going right back to the first toy car that the brat slobbered on during his bald-and-toothless phase. "Hi Cooter," he greets, gets a distracted wave for an answer. The mechanic's looking at the untidy knot of girls that Bo has left in his wake. "You about through here?" he asks as though Luke's the one that's been out there dancing all night.

"Yep," he answers because he's been through for quite some time now. The jukebox starts up again, with a decent song this time, but the bass is just as strong as it has been all night, and he reckons they'd better get out of here before his body starts demanding what it can't have.

But he's a silly, silly man. As soon as they get out of the Boar's Nest and onto the road, his body remembers what his brain forgot – the General's engine, roaring around him, is like a special realm of hell, saved just for him. Vibrations coming up through the seat to course through his body, promising all manner of sex that he's not allowed to have.

* * *

General Lee has never let him down before. The racer can go from zero to sixty in six seconds, he can jump over any obstacle that Boss or Rosco (or Bo and Luke) have ever seen fit to put before him. He's more than a car, he's a good friend and he's—

Hard, that's one dang thing he is. Roll bar, seemed like such a good idea when they installed it. Protecting their heads and all, especially when he figured they'd need Luke's brains in the long run. But right about now it's more of an obstruction, taking up valuable space and being just plain hard, even wrapped in duct tape like it is.

There's more room back here. Or there would be if the front seats would fold well, or if the back one could lay down into the trunk, but that's about the same as expecting cows to walk on two legs like chickens. It's not going to happen.

"Luke," he complains, because his cousin's supposed to be smart. A real genius and a fine shade-tree mechanic to boot. There's got to be some system he can rig up to improve their situation. (Or he can build them a new, bigger car. A van, maybe, and quickly. Like in the next hour or so.)

The problem, as far as Bo sees it, is that neither of them is a girl. Not that he wants Luke to be a girl, he likes Luke being Luke just fine, but some things (a lot of things, when it comes right down to it) would be easier if he were.

"Move," Luke mumbles back at him and the talking is kind of a letdown, even if he did initiate it. After all, Luke's tongue had been doing something far better before it started conversing. Licking and sucking at his neck, that tender spot where it levels out into shoulder and makes him want to—

Well, tip his head back, for one, but that's how he came into painful contact with the roll bar in the first place. The other thing it makes him want to do is get naked, and quickly. About the only good thing about Daisy dragging them into town yesterday morning to do the shopping was that he was able to slip out of Rhuebottoms and down to the drug store. Bought some hand cream and stashed it under the General's driver's seat. Showed it to Luke this morning when they were supposed to be working on the engine (apparently Luke missed the car or maybe just missed an excuse to stand half bent over him, shirtless), got a headshake, but it wasn't really a no. Just Luke pretending to be above needing sex.

Which didn't stop him from coming along on this afternoon's fruitless mission. It's not cold but it's not exactly warm, either. Last night's light rain turned into today's heavy mud, which has ruled out the bank of the pond or the empty pasture, so they're out in the woods where no one ever goes, car jammed between bushes like moonshiners. Cramped into the back seat where they've both had sex before, just not with each other. Which is where it would help if one of them was a girl, because he knows he can fit back here with someone about half Luke's size.

"This way," Luke explains, trying to shove him into the corner where the back of the seat meets the side of the car, but it's not going to work. Bo's shoulders just won't bend that way.

"Ain't all of us flexible like you," he complains, sitting up to his full height instead of slouching. This way his head is just about high enough to hit the ceiling, but at least he's not curled into a pretzel.

And in order for the kissing to pick up where it left off, Luke's going to have to climb into his lap. Which, again, is like expecting cows to walk on two legs like chickens. He sighs, wraps his fist up in the open collar of Luke's shirt. "Get this off." _Or I'll rip it off._

Gets a raised eyebrow and a smirk in response, both of which accuse him of being an impatient lover, but he saw the way Luke's legs jiggled up and down as he sat in the passenger seat while Bo drove them home from the Boar's Nest last night. Extra energy and no place to put it, and then there was the bed overnight. How Luke kept his hips a clear distance from Bo's, even if it meant he slept at all manner of awkward angles. The man wants it just as much as he does, and Bo doesn't see the point in pretending otherwise.

Luke does as he's told, even if he pretends it's just to protect and defend his shirt buttons. Bo pulls his own tee shirt over his head and balls it up. Slouches back to where he was and shoves the shirt behind his head for a cushion. Luke smiles – a real smile that congratulates Bo for being so smart – and hands over his flannel shirt to add to the impromptu pillow.

He grabs Bo's leg behind the knee and pulls it up. Shuffling, grunting – there might even be a cuss or two in there – climbing halfway out of the General then back in just to get himself between Bo's legs. If a man wanted to make fun or another man for being eager to have sex, Bo figures this would be the right moment. Except it would ruin the mood and he's admittedly pretty fond of the mood in its current condition.

Luke leans forward, his weight on his knees and the arm he has draped across the back seat, and kisses him. It's like starting all over again when it seems to him that they were really quite a bit further along.

Luke's free hand finds his chest, glides lightly over the skin there, tickling and tingling. Thick fingers – workman's hands, the old-timers call them. Rough around the edges with scars and callouses, making him want to arch up into the touch, but he can't when he's slouched into the edge of the seat. Just has to lean back and let himself be teased.

He tries to tip his head to a better angle for the kiss, but loses Luke's shirt in the process. Nothing but the thin cloth of his own tee shirt between his head and the roll bar, and it's not exactly comfortable. Grabbing the shirt and stuffing it behind his head again breaks the kiss and gets him a grumble from Luke, whose lips and tongue give up on him and go off in search of that spot on his neck that was making him squirm a few minutes ago.

His left arm, caught between his body and the back of the seat, is relatively useless and will probably be asleep soon, but his right hand starts to explore its way up Luke's arm until it reaches shoulder. Firm muscle there, smooth skin; pale, now that its winter.

Luke finds that place on his neck that makes his head tip back. The shirts do a reasonable job of keeping him from hurting himself, but the roll bar is still a solid presence behind them. He sucks in a deep breath, smells of exhaust and dust and moldy oldness; now that Jesse and Daisy don't ever ride in the General anymore, the back seat's been left pretty much untouched.

He and Luke are making up for that now.

His fingernails scratch lightly down Luke's back, not breaking the skin, just making it known that Bo would like more now, please. If you don't mind and if you could just—

Luke kisses the spot he's been sucking on, pinches it lightly with his teeth, then lets go. Looks down his own body to where their hips are nowhere near each other and groans. Bo whines his agreement with that sentiment.

"Try," Luke says, huffing with the effort, "moving," shoving on Bo's hip, but there's nowhere for him to move with both of Luke's knees between his legs, "here." Little shuffles and slides, but nothing much happens and their hips are just as far apart as they ever were.

"Come on, General," Bo commands. Luke tips his head up to look at him, forehead a mess of confused wrinkles. Bo shrugs, at least as well as a man whose shoulders are pressed against the side of a car can shrug. "Always works when I want him to jump something."

Luke snorts, his head drops and his shoulders start to shake. Laughter, loud enough to rattle the timbers, if they had any. All they've got is steel. (And bruises.)

Bo struggles to sit up out of his slouch. There's only so much his back and knees can take. Pulls his left arm out of the crack it was stuck in and drapes it along the top of the back seat. Luke's laugh fades until it's gone all together and he tries to sit back on his knees. Doesn't work too well; either he's too tall or the roof is too low.

"Luke," Bo says. "What do you think of converting the General into a van?"

Which, apparently, isn't funny. Not when Luke's been separated from the car for three years and has only now gotten to spend any quality time with it.

Bo grabs him by the back of his neck, pulling gently forward, grip slipping on sweat and slick hair. Leans forward to meet him halfway and gives him a sweet little kiss of apology for suggesting the two of them permanently disfigure the one thing they did right in all the years they've known each other.

Thick hand, warm on his chest again, easy now to tip their heads to the best angle for kissing. Which is enough until it's not and they still haven't solved their larger problem.

"Luke," he complains when he has the space to do it.

"Bo," gets mocked right back at him. _You_ think of something this time.

So he does – or doesn't, it's not so much thought as instinct that leads his hand down to cup Luke through his jeans, to palm him and rub as best he can through layers of denim and cotton.

The kiss he gets for that is not so much grateful as hungry. Relentless press of lips against his own, greedy and wanting; breathing gets to be a challenge when Luke's hand cups around him in a mirror motion, press and friction.

Jeans are—what stupid fool invented jeans to begin with? Too tight and really rather extraneous, unnecessary. Hard to get open, especially when they're belted.

"Luke," he complains again, and this time it seems he's got a point, one that's very valid and must be addressed immediately. Luke sitting back to open his own buckle, unbutton his jeans and pull the zipper. Bo tries to keep up, but his belt is newer, stiff leather that doesn't want to let him go. Thick fingers – those workman's hands, doing the noblest work they're capable of – shove his out of the way and pull on his belt with brute force that squeezes against his belly before mercifully releasing. Button, zipper, hand on skin because Bo doesn't bother with underwear, at least not back here in Hazzard. In Mooresville, on the road, he wears it as often as not because Aunt Lavinia would want him to. Here he feels justified in being comfortable. Which gives Luke easy access to him and makes him have to work his hand into the opening in Luke's boxers in order to return the favor.

It's not what either of them wants, going to take some time and effort to make it worthwhile, but he's up to the task. Hand wrapped around, kissing like he means it and—

"Breaker one, breaker one, I may be crazy, but I ain't dumb." Funny, the CB never does that to him in his dreams. Or anywhere else, these days. "Any of y'all Dukes home on the Hazzard net?" It would be welcome to have friends that want to talk to him, if it weren't… so utterly unwelcome in its timing.

Luke's head drops, chin just about to his chest and shaking from side to side. More importantly his hands stops doing what it was doing. And Bo really liked what it was doing.

Daisy's at work. Got to be loud there even though the sun is still pretty high in the sky; it's New Year's Eve and Hazzard loves a good party. Especially the kind that starts early and goes on all night.

"Jesse," he whines, doesn't mean to, but Luke's hand has let go of him completely, and he really, _really_ liked what it was doing before. A lot. "Jesse'll get it, right?"

Luke looks up at him, shakes his head again, this time in dismissal. There Bo goes again, shirking his responsibilities, that headshake says. Someone's got to take care of the old man.

Luke tries to reach of the handset in its holder on the dash. Too far away, he's going to have to move, but Bo tightens the hand around him. _Priorities, Luke._

Luke swallows hard. "Bo," he mumbles, and it's a plea. "Let me…"

Luke's bound and determined to go after that CB microphone. Bo figures that injuring him isn't going to do anything good for him in the long run, but still. They were in the middle of something. Something important and Luke can't just move away from him. (Except, he's Luke. He probably can.)

"This is Crazy Cooter, can I get me a Duke boy on this here frequency?"

"Okay," Bo answers. "But we are going to finish this." He gives a few strokes of apology for the roughness, watches Luke's eyelids flutter and his determination waver. And then it's back, he's leaning toward the front of the car, arm stretched out to get that microphone.

"You got Luke here, Crazy-C." Bo snorts at the sound of Luke's voice, kind of high and pinched around the edges. He hopes that Cooter – and half of Hazzard, the half that hasn't yet made it to the Boar's Nest for the New Year's celebration and is listening in on this supposedly private CB conversation – won't be able to recognize it as a deprived-of-sex-at-the-wrong-moment voice, even if he and Luke both know that's what is. "What's up?"

Bo lets out a loud laugh at that one, rueful though it might be. Endures a dirty, scolding look from Luke. But Bo is known to be an easily-amused, happy guy. Anyone listening in over the airwaves will only think it's a normal Saturday afternoon if he's laughing at something along the road. Luke's voice, betraying an odd sort of stress for an afternoon of tooling around the countryside in the General Lee, that's more likely to get some attention.

"Y'all might just want to get into town." Oh, yes, that's exactly what he wants to do. Right now and on the double, too. "Either that or run for the hills. Rosco done just left half his tire tread on the road out in front of the courthouse, and he was headed west out on Route 36." Toward the farm. "Enos was mumbling something about not believing them boys would rob the bank like that when he came out and got into his own car, chasing on Rosco's heels. I reckon," and there's a certain tone of glee in Cooter's voice, thrill of the chase and all that, that Bo really resents. At least right at this moment when he's anything but gleeful. "Boss Hogg's up to something."

"Yeah, all right." Luke looks down at his open pants, grimaces. Somehow, they're going to have to get themselves dressed again. "We're on our way."

"Luke," Bo says as they pull themselves out of their respective windows so they can stand upright for the tucking, zipping, buttoning and otherwise making themselves presentable, "I changed my mind." Luke looks up from what he's doing, eyebrow up to show his surprise that Bo is even in possession of a mind to change. Yeah, all right, he wasn't thinking a few minutes ago. But now he is. "We ain't got to finish this later." Luke's eyebrow thinks that's a fascinating notion. He starts to walk around from the driver's side of the car to the passenger – apparently Bo's driving so he'd better get his belt fixed quickly. Or not; he pulls it out of the loops and drops it into the back seat before climbing up and over the roof to his own side. Sits in his window frame and waits for Luke to haul his feet up into the car and be doing the same. Looks at him and adds, "You got to come to Moorsesville where this kind of thing don't never happen."

Gets a shaken head and a finger pointing him into the car. _Just drive, Bo._

* * *

Jesse had his complaints about this, but it only makes sense. Bo's NASCAR regimen begins by eight in the morning on Monday, even if it is the second of January. Which means driving in the afternoon and evening of New Year's Day, even if Jesse wanted him to stay that one last night.

Luke feels about the same, really. One more night for Bo to come to him in his bed would be just about perfect. In theory, but then he'd only have to kick him out at a ridiculous hour of the morning, and everyone would have to get up to see him off anyway, which would mean that Bo would have to be out of Luke's bed by two and it's only safe to assume that everyone else in the house is asleep at some point past midnight – no, it's just as well to let Bo go now. Even if no part of him really wants to.

He's borrowed the Jeep to follow his cousin out to the limits of Hazzard again, but they don't quite make it that far. Scant coverage and the risk of Big Ed Little sitting in wait and watching from the other side of the Chickasaw line give him good enough reasons to pull off onto the overgrown road that once led to Shoveltown and stash the jeep in the dying kudzu. Bo follows him into the thicket with moonshiner's instinct.

It would be easier, maybe, for Bo to come to him. More space to move around in the jeep, but it's open to the sky above and feels like trouble waiting to happen, so Luke trots over to the General and slides in.

It's—a hug would be wise, really. The smartest choice given all the things they started and never could find a way to finish, all the nights spent close but not touching, at least not like they wanted to. But they're kissing because they always have been fools, Bo pulling him forward with a grip on his shoulder, trying to get him closer when really there's—

"Gear shift," he points out perfectly logically, gets pulled on again, kissed a little more firmly. Tastes like frustration, feels like sadness. Feels like a gear shift against his leg again, hard and not really helping anything at all. "Bo," he says, pulling back. His hand in curls, not as blonde as they used to be. Too many years spent in dark gyms and garages, too many hours racing in circles with a helmet over his head. "I'll come to Mooresville, all right? First chance I get."

Which might be a few weeks, what with how the two of them didn't take the fall Boss wanted them to for robbing the Hazzard Bank. Found, as a matter of fact, the missing money right in the trunk of one extra-long Cadillac convertible with a reasonably incriminating pair of horns protruding from the hood. There was all manner of innocent confusion professed in the face of the bank inspector, who came down from Atlanta just to investigate this particular irregularity. (And who was probably meant to find the bags of cash in the Dukes' barn, which was where he and Bo found them before relocating them to their rightful owner. More or less.) Which means no charges were pressed. When the bank reopens tomorrow morning, no one will be any richer or poorer than they were on Friday evening, and Boss may not be favorably inclined toward one Luke Duke and his request to be free of probation for an extended period. (Or he may be very much in favor of Luke being gone, which is even more worrisome, what with Jesse and Daisy being vulnerable to whatever manner of scheme the unrepentant embezzler might get up to next.)

Bo huffs, more about the gearshift and other limitations to the car than anything else, Luke figures. Delayed gratification and Bo never have been good friends.

"I want to come to Mooresville," he insists. Because he does, he wants another chance at liking Bo's life. Maybe he didn't try hard enough last time he was there, maybe he wasn't fair. Maybe he wasn't used to Bo having friends he doesn't know or maybe it was just too hard to share his cousin right then, in that same week when he and Bo had barely figured out how to be together. It could be good, maybe, if he found a job on someone's pit crew – doesn't have to be his cousin's, though it would be better if it was – and moved in with Bo. If they shared a space that was all their own without family members just short distances away, through thin walls.

He is, he realized sometime during the week when Jesse was all but radiating distaste at him over his Christmas morning interaction with Hannah, going to inherit the farm some day. In ten years or twenty, whether he lives there now or not, marries and has kids or doesn't, the place is going to be his. Daisy will get married again, she'll move somewhere with her husband and have kids that will come and visit the farm, but they won't live there. Bo will probably inherit half the farm, too, but it won't matter whether he does or doesn't. They'll share it without even realizing that's what they're doing, no need to draw boundaries between one half and the other, because that's how they've lived their whole lives.

All he really needs to do is see that Jesse is taken care of for the rest of his life, and that Daisy has a roof over her head until she does find another man. (The right one this time; Luke's not going to bite his tongue again if she picks herself another jackass.) And he can do that from Mooresville, so long as Jesse's not stubborn and doesn't refuse to take his money. Which might be asking too much but then again, Jesse might be glad enough to let Luke go once he knows the details of why he split up with Hannah.

Bo wraps both arms around him and pulls him close again. Buries his head in Luke's shoulder because this is goodbye. He's got to go.

_It'll be okay, Bo_. That's what he wants to say, but he can't because he doesn't know it's true.

"I'll be there as soon as I can," he says again, grimaces and does his best to ignore the dent that the gear shift is leaving in his leg.

* * *

It's dark. Cold too, because he turned off the heat before he left. Old habit from growing up in a farmhouse where the fire got put out when everyone left the house for the day and only got restarted with the evening meal. By the time it got warm, it was bedtime and unless the temperatures were threatening to go below zero, the fire got put out again. Freezing for day after night after day from mid-November to the end of March, and he loved every minute of it. Would give anything to go home to that kind of cold instead of this kind.

Empty echo that isn't really there, can't be. Wasn't there when he left and nothing, really, has changed.

Except for how he spent days back at home and Luke never once told him that they couldn't do this, that they couldn't be together. It's a small thing really, but it's a good chunk of what he's ever wanted and it's sorely tempting to just turn around, walk back down those flights of stairs, get into the General and forget this place.

But then this place is the other half of what he's always wanted. NASCAR and racing and if it hasn't exactly lived up to his imaginings up to now, that's only because it's been lonely. Boring and almost meaningless without Luke here to share it with him.

He swears to himself that when Luke comes up here next, he's going to make it easy for him. Going to introduce him to Doug Reed and let them talk shop until Doug realizes he'd be a fool not to hire himself yet another Duke. And when the offer comes, he's not going to pressure anything, he's just going to let events take their natural course. NASCAR was, after all, his cousin's dream before it was even his.

He can still feel Luke on his skin, taste him on his lips. Which only makes his apartment darker and colder.

He should eat, he should unpack. He should probably get in the shower, too. He pushes open his bedroom door, drops the duffle bag he lugged up from the General onto the floor. Lies down on his bed and promises himself that he'll get up and do all those important things that need doing in a minute. Imagines Luke at his side; hot, because Luke always is, heavy body making the mattress sag. The weight of a lazy arm draped over his waist, and Bo closes his eyes.

Falls asleep like that, feeling Luke all around him.


	20. Chapter 20

"Hand me the—" the wind cuts through his coat and he might as well not be wearing one at all. His ear hurts, left one, the one facing to the north. It's not spring, not even close to spring and the air frosts up around his mouth as he huffs. The ground is hard and frozen under his feet, the trees are stiff and barren sticks jutting into the dull gray of the sky. Everything around him knows it's winter except the damned wind, blowing like Mother Nature's got late January confused with mid-March and is trying to birth a new spring right up out of the bitter cold of winter.

But Jesse wants to pasture Maudine. Says she's getting restless in her stall, even if it is the dead of winter and she's spent even the mildest Januaries of years past in the barn. Even if Jesse himself has always sworn that livestock should be in until at least the end of February, even if the grass is brown and dead, the old man wants to give her room to roam a little bit.

Luke takes the two steps over to his uncle and pulls the sledgehammer out of his hand. Rude, maybe, but the wind blows too loudly past their ears to properly ask for it. The old-timer should be inside anyway, stoking a warm fire and reading his newspaper.

(And Bo should be here, by his side. His cousin wouldn't be doing any more work than Jesse is, but he'd know when Luke needed something, wouldn't just stand there and make him ask for it.)

"Luke," he gets chastised. Funny how the wind subsides long enough for that.

"Sorry," he mumbles back, figures the word won't even make it to Jesse's ears and can't swear he cares.

He wraps his hands, pink from the cold, already sore from using the post-hole digger to invade nearly frozen ground, around the long handle of the sledgehammer. Lifts it high over his head and drives it hard down onto the post he's pounding into the hole he made. Raises it again and brings it down with even more force. Up-down, the force of his effort reverberating along the length of his arms to his shoulders. Twinge of muscles across his back that he ignores in favor of bringing the sledgehammer up again.

Too soon, he's got the damned post driven into the ground as far as he needs it to go, and it's time to move on to the next one. Which means digging again, so he drops the sledge wherever it falls and bends to retrieve the post-hole digger that he equally as casually discarded earlier.

"Feel better?" Jesse asks and there's a tsk in his voice about the way Luke's treating the tools. But really, they're made of steel and wood, sturdy as hell and meant to survive much worse than what he's been doing to them.

"Not particularly," he admits. He's not feeling much of anything at all, other than cold. At least that ear that was paining in the wind has just about gone numb.

Jesse gives him that dubious look, head tipped down and if he was wearing glasses he's be looking over the rims at him. Asking him just exactly who it is that he thinks he's fooling.

At least it's only three posts that got so rotten that they snapped off low. The rest of the fence has been deemed sturdy enough and while Luke might question the wisdom of that assumption on another day, he just doesn't have the energy to rebuild more than this little section today, anyway.

He slams the post-hole digger into the ground, feels the shock echoing up the tool to his arms and shoulders. Stomps on the blades a few times to try to get them deeper. He knows this soil isn't rocky; he's the one who dug the old holes here that are now filled with the rotted stumps of what were once posts. But as cold at it is he reckons the ground beneath him might just as well be the paved roads of town. Just the tiniest trickle of dirt falls out when he opens the blades.

He slams the tip of the tool into the ground again, hears the metal clatter as the blades resist his efforts. More stomping with his big old boots and—

"Luke," Jesse says again.

It's an impossible situation, really. Maudine needs a secure pasture or she'll wander right off into the woods and find herself in Chickasaw before she knows it (or town, maybe she'd just stroll into the Courthouse and kick Boss through his own windows for being selfish and mean and downright stingy – she likes kicking Boss), Luke's meant to make that pasture secure, the ground's frozen and somehow, the tools are supposed to survive the ordeal. It's one of those rock and hard place circumstances, and Jesse's nagging at his back like there's some kind of easy solution.

He pulls another trickle of dirt out of the ground, slightly steadier stream falling out of the blades this time. Once he gets through the top six inches or so, there's soft dirt below and it'll get pretty damn easy to finish this hole.

He's a little less brutal with the tool the next time he drives it into the ground. It is, after all, the only one they've got. Old, like Uncle Jesse, a bit worse for the wear and unless some money falls out of the sky, they've got no chance of replacing it.

The wind cuts through from the north again, chilling away any amount of sweat he might have worked up. His left hand's working its way into being blistered, but the ground is finally giving way under his efforts. Sometime before next Christmas, he might just have a hole here.

And sometime before next Christmas he might just get to make good on his promise to go up to Mooresville and see Bo, too. For now, Boss is holding grudges, planting season's not all that far away and Bo is accepting what Luke has to say over the phone about why he hasn't been able to make his way up there yet, but there's less of a laugh in his voice over the way Hazzard never changes. More like impatient acceptance and Luke figures that maybe his cousin is losing faith. He wouldn't blame him if he did, after the way the last three-plus years have gone.

The hole's about as big as it's willing to get and besides, he figures a post ought to fit in there now. And this, right here is the only reason he didn't send Jesse back inside an hour ago. (That and the fact that he doesn't much figure Jesse would actually go.) He drops the digger off to the side and uses his left hand to gesture for his uncle to come help him hoist the post into place. Gets a dark look that tells him to quit being so bossy when he hasn't even said a single word.

"One, two, three," he chants and then they lift. Jesse's got the end closest to the hole, so mostly all he has to do is properly guide it while Luke uses brute strength to manage the heavy lifting. Once they've got it standing, Jesse goes to retrieve the sledgehammer, while Luke twists and shoves and gets the post into place as well as he can with just his body. After that comes the pounding again. Jesse's less protective of the sledgehammer than he is the post-hole digger, so Luke's allowed to wield it as powerfully as he wants. He won't get lectured.

"Luke, if you want the girl back, I reckon you'd best just go tell her so." At least not about mistreating the tools. Anything else is on the table. "Instead of taking it out on the fence post. Or me and Daisy."

"I don't," Luke says, taking his concentration away from his work to look at his uncle. Because it's polite to meet the eyes of the person you're talking to, but also because he'd swear they've had this discussion before and it always goes exactly the same way. "Want Hannah back."

"Oh, I figure it might hurt you a bit to swallow some of that pride." It's one of those days when Jesse's playing at being deaf. There have been more of those lately than Luke would really like. Funny how the old man can hear Maudine being restless in her stall all the way from the house, but he can't hear what Luke's saying when he's standing right next to him. Then again, he is wearing that old red hat with the earflaps down against the chill and the wind. Luke idly wonders how much trouble he'd get in for walking right up to his uncle, pulling the flap out of the way and shouting into his ear that he doesn't want Hannah back. Figures his skin might not be quite numb enough to keep him from feeling the business end of the whip against his backside. "But I promise, it won't kill you." The oldster bends over to pick up the post-hole digger from where Luke dropped it a few minutes ago.

"I don't want Hannah back," he says and his jaw hurts from the way he's clenching it in an effort not to yell.

Jesse gives him a steady sort of a look, the kind that doesn't believe him and is waiting for him to confess to all of his sins. _Yes, Uncle Jesse, I swiped a candy bar from Mr. Rhuebottom's shelf when I was eight. I'm sorry, I won't do it again. Oh, and also, I want to get back together with Hannah, but I don't know how to manage it._

"Well then, what _is_ wrong with you?"

His head drops and he lets out a little snort. _You wouldn't believe me if I told you._ _Either that or you would believe me and that just might be worse._

The wind whistles in his ear again and maybe it's not as numb as he thought.

"I miss Bo," he says and that's about as much as his Duke honesty compels him to say. Oh, he and Bo are going to have to come clean with Jesse some day and it's not going to be pretty when they do. But today's not going to be that day.

"Well then," has that misleading sound to it. Like Jesse's pretending to understand what he's saying, but it's all a clever ruse to lull him into a false sense of complacency. "I reckon if you asked him real nice, Bo would be perfectly willing to come here." Sure he would, but they've already discovered that Hazzard's winter provides their relationship with more than a few obstacles. "And be your best man." Oh, Jesse's not going to let go of Hannah. Not until he has a good reason to and the only reason Luke can give him is a very, very bad one. "And I reckon if you asked me nice, I could just hand you the post-hole digger and you wouldn't have to go snatching it from me like I'm just some sort of old man that's in your way."

Luke could explain how he never said that Jesse was old or that he was in the way. But the wind's blowing, the cold's getting the better of his fingers and really, Jesse's gotten very good at that playing deaf thing. So he doesn't bother explaining anything at all, but he's going to need a dentist soon for all the damage he's doing to his teeth. What with the nonstop grinding and all.

"Could you hand me the post-hole digger," is not going to be enough; it's never been enough in his whole life. "Please," might just get him the post-hole digger handed to him all nice as you please and as a side bonus might buy him a little bit of silence, too.

* * *

 

"Hazzard," he hears over the clink of weights sliding into place on the extension machine. Sounds like Don's planning on doing to leg work today. But it's not Don's voice that's calling him. "What are you doing?"

Well, he had been doing his bench presses, but now he's put the barbell back up into the cradle.

"Sitting up," he says, but he figures that Butch already knows that. He must, he's got a hand planted on his hip and his dark lips are flattened out into a line that just cannot believe Bo Duke and his crazy bullshit.

"You got twenty-five more repetitions to go," he gets informed, though he's pretty sure he counted what he's already done reasonably accurately.

"I did a hundred," he has the utter lack of wisdom (and self-preservation) to defend himself.

And now he's going to have to do a hundred more.

"You're up to one twenty-five," Butch informs him, like this is something he's supposed to know. And maybe he is, maybe they talked about this. He can't swear that they didn't, only that it wasn't all that important to him if they did.

Don snickers through a straight face, one of his questionable (and very few) natural talents. The hiss of the leg extension machine covers a thousand sins and Bo lies back down to finish what Butch has told him to. His trainer comes over to spot him, which frees up the burly young assistant, Mark, to go over and add tension to the cables on the fly machine. Oh, there's not going to be any part of Bo's arms that doesn't hurt by the end of the day.

"You used to take your physical training more seriously," Butch tells him, possibly as a means of explaining why he's got to be tortured now. "Now I got to watch you every minute. Not like Don there."

Funny thing, how Butch has always treated him and Don like brothers tangled up in an ugly mess of sibling rivalry. Funnier still is how it usually works.

"Four," Bo counts, which is really one hundred four and it seems to him like that's more than enough.

Don's not even really supposed to be here now. Not that he can't be, just that each of the Reed drivers, including Lem, has designated one-on-one time with Butch standing over them, making sure they strengthen their arms, their core, their legs. Don's workout is before Bo's, starting at a truly stupid hour of the morning. But more often than not, the backup driver stays through at least part of Bo's two hour training. Partly because he genuinely likes sculpting his body and can be obsessive about it, but partly because he's competitive. And Bo will be the first to admit, Don's better about this physical training than he is, just like Luke was always better at heavy chores. And neither of them can touch Bo's skill behind the wheel anyway. Strength isn't nearly as important as instinct.

"Thirteen," Bo says, his breath sawing through his chest, his arms like rubber. He's going to have some trouble completing this set of repetitions smoothly.

_(Pushups were the same waste of time that they always had been on the farm. Letting himself drop just so he could push himself back up again and not a single mile marker ever got crossed that way._

_But Don was there next to him, pumping himself up and down like it was the most important mission he'd ever had in his life._

_And Bo had grown up chasing after Luke Duke. Everything he'd ever tried or even wanted to try, Luke could do first, better. Aunt Lavinia would tell him not to mind what Luke could do or how well he could do it. His only goal, she always said, was to be a better Bo Duke today than he had been yesterday._

_Totally useless advice and wasted breath besides. He'd taken off after Luke and not quit until he caught up. Mostly, there were some things Luke could always do better than him, but he'd made a good go at all of it and if he came up short from time to time, it was only just slightly short. Inches, really, fractions of inches._

_Don figured to intimidate him with his effortless style, but Don wasn't Luke. Not nearly as strong or tireless and Bo had more practice at forcing his body to do what it wasn't naturally inclined to do than Don knew._

_So he matched him through the pushups while Butch stood off to the side and glowed. As though he thought he had anything at all to do with the strength on display in the gym. Or maybe he thought Don did, that Bo was somehow afraid that if Don could outdo him physically, he'd wind up getting the second driver's position._

_But he wasn't one to expect the worst and he wasn't worried about his driving skills, either. Doug Reed made decisions based on who could win trophies and purses for him, not who showed off better in this cinderblock hellhole that smelled of dust and sweat. And Don couldn't touch what Bo was capable of on the track._

_He matched the other driver up for up and down for down, one-handed, with a clap in the middle and using knuckles instead of palms. Not out of fear, but out of loneliness. Because he missed spending his days keeping up with Luke._

_But more than that he did it because he figured that someday, he and Luke would once again find themselves at the same place at the same time. And when they did he hoped that this time Luke would look at him and see an equal partner and a worthy companion._

_So he laughed when Don quit pumping his body up and down, and did one more pushup just for the hell of it.)_

"You been eating right?" Butch asks him when he puts the barbell back into its cradle with sore and shaky arms. He can't swear that he actually did all twenty-five of his additional lifts; he quit counting and it feels like he came up short. But Butch doesn't challenge him about that.

"Yeah," he answers back, between his heavy gasps of air. He had his protein shake this morning, still has the taste of wet newspaper in his mouth to prove it.

"Getting enough sleep?" Yeah, yeah, he's been a relatively good boy. Sure, he's had some breaks in his routine, but not as many as he usually does. He's been turning Itchy down half the time when his friend invites him out. He'd go, but there are girls out there and if he goes he's going to be expected to spend time with them and bring a few home. Which he doesn't want to do and doesn't want to explain, so he skips the bar and goes out to the mall instead. He doesn't like shopping, but he doesn't like to be alone either, and Mooresville's indoor shopping center draws people from all the surrounding towns. It's always busy.

"I'm fine," Bo answers, gets a headshake for a response.

"Well shit, Bo," the trainer says in his clipped tones and pure vowels that always make his curses sound downright cute when they're meant to be menacing. "I just figured you'd be chomping at the bit to add to your physical strength right about now." Bo looks up at him from where he's still reclined on the bench. His breath is caught and he really should be moving over to the fly machine, but he's too busy trying to figure out where Butch is leading him. What he means and why he's saying it, and then he remembers.

It's the sort of thing no second driver should forget, really.

Lem has announced that at the end of the upcoming season, he plans to retire.

Which makes Bo the obvious choice to inherit the senior driver position. But, of course, Don's going to fight him for it. So he really should be grateful for Butch's extra attention at this time.

Be he can't really bring himself to care a whole lot. His body's being put through the wringer here in Mooresville, but his mind is back in Hazzard, driving over dirt roads and finding a secluded pond somewhere with Luke.

Bo gestures across the gym. "Let's do the fly work," he says.

* * *

 

_Oh, I figure it might hurt you a bit to swallow some of that pride. But I promise it won't kill you._

Easy words for Jesse to say when he's not the one trying to swallow down a bull, horns first.

"No."

Or maybe it's a boar.

The Marines had words for what Luke's facing right now, but here in Hazzard using those words would entitle anyone older than him to take him over their knee and spank him. Which he'd never live down, so he has to keep his mouth under control because the two idiots in front of him are in fact older than him, if nowhere near wiser.

"I got a right to see my kin." Then again, he can't claim to be exactly brilliant when that's the first argument he comes out with. Sounds like something Bo would say and he can just about supply the counter-argument himself.

"You can see your kin," Boss simpers back at him, cigar jutting at a jaunty angle from his mouth. The man is thrilled to see Luke Duke choking on his pride. Uncle Jesse would be less thrilled to know that his advice has been heeded, but with the wrong person. He's not begging Hannah to take him back, he's begging Boss to let him go. "Each and every one of your kinfolks. As long as they're in Hazzard."

"As long as they're in Hazzard," Rosco echoes, makes a bunch of meaningless noises to follow.

"Now if your kin don't want to come to Hazzard no more, I guess there ain't nothing I can do about that, is there?"

The taste of blood never has appealed to him a whole lot. Reminds him of boxing matches and fist fights and other mindless violence, but he's biting his cheek to keep from saying all those things he wants to about Boss and his schemes and why would anyone who wasn't stuck in Hazzard want to stay here? Keeping all that down inside him is bound to draw blood somewhere.

It's not, he tries to remind himself in some part of his brain where logic exists separate from anger, Boss's fault that Bo left Hazzard to begin with. The blame for that rests straight up the middle between the two Duke boys.

Maybe he should have sent Jesse to do this after all. The crafty old coot has a few tricks up his sleeve as pertains to one J.D. Hogg and can usually get what he wants, eventually. Then again, he figures he and Jesse have had just about enough of each other – even if he is the kin that Boss so generously allows him to see by keeping him trapped in Hazzard – and the best thing he can do for both of them is to get himself this pass without help.

Daisy, well, Daisy wasn't with her two cousins on that miserable moonshine-running night, so she can go anywhere she pleases. But if she were in this particular predicament, her legs would undoubtedly help her out of it. Bo's smile probably played a big enough role in how he got free of probation, but Luke's not as pretty or personable as either of his cousins.

"My kin can't come here." But Luke's got his wits and if he can calm himself down enough to use them, he can win this battle. He licks the blood off the tender flesh on the inside of his cheek. Doesn't taste quite as bad as he remembers. "Because he's too busy on the NASCAR circuit. Why, he ain't made it to Hazzard but three or four times in as many years." Musing tone, like he's just thinking how amazing such a thing is.

"Well, that don't make no never mind," Boss informs him.

"No, it don't," Rosco giggles.

Boss fancies himself a smart man, which makes him pretty easy to deal with, even when he's being a jackass. Squeezed behind his ornate desk, tobacco-stained fingers not four inches from the drawer where he keeps the paperwork that would let Luke out of here for a day or a week or forever, but not moving them to do anything other than pop his cigar out of his mouth, then shove it back in. Annoying, but ultimately useful.

Rosco, on the other hand, is just plain irritating. Simpering around behind his boss, patting the bald spot on the older man's head, hugging him and acting like he has no will of his own. Boss is already dressed entirely in white; heck the two of them ought to just get married already. Luke has to stop himself from saying that out loud. Or telling Rosco to go play in traffic.

"I suppose not," Luke agrees. "It ain't like you're keeping him from coming here."

"Nope, it ain't," Boss answers, but the smugness is gone. It's a strange world when Luke Duke is agreeing with him. The kind of strange that bears monitoring. Even Rosco quits his tiddly-tuddlying long enough to stare at Luke with a kind of nervous fascination. (Flash, who is smarter than any of them, just snores at this unexpected development from her safe little haven next to the filing cabinet.)

"Yeah, I guess it's just his schedule on the circuit that keeps him away."

"That's right," Rosco echoes and either ignores or just doesn't see the dirty look he gets from Boss for parroting back a Duke's words. "It's just his schedule on the circuit." Boss turns his head and directs that mean stare, eyebrows so heavy they almost look like they could fall off him, at Rosco. More idiot noises follow, a bunch of ijjes and oohs. Rosco may not know what he's done wrong, but he can tell he's committed some form of a naughty-naughty. He whines low in his throat like a puppy looking for a warm lap on a lonely day.

"What are you up to, Luke Duke?" Boss turns away from Rosco to ask. Pops his cigar out of his mouth and lets his jowls go lax as he tries to figure it out. Duke boys are not supposed to be agreeable, just like the sun isn't supposed to shine at midnight.

"I ain't up to nothing at all." Luke's thumbs find his pockets and he leans back just a bit. The perfect picture of pure relaxation. A man with no problems whatsoever. "Especially not getting no job on the NASCAR circuit myself."

"What are you talking about?"

"What is he talking about?"

"Dat, Rosco, you just hush up, I ain't going to get nowhere with him if you keep on jibber-jabbering." Flash comes out of her near comatose state just long enough to let out a vibrating woof of complaint at the mistreatment of her daddy, then lays her head back down across her paws and closes her eyes. Rosco's face morphs into a tight little smile of pride or victory until he recognizes that Boss is giving him one of those mean stares again. Then his mouth forms into a serious straight line because he knows he and his hound are about to get kicked out of here if they don't both behave themselves. "What are you talking about, getting a job on the circuit?" Boss asks him when he's confident that he's in control of the room again.

"Well, it don't matter none at this point. You ain't going to give me no pass, so I guess I might just as well go home." His right hand pats his shirt pockets as if he's looking for a set of car keys there. He isn't; he walked here from the garage, where Cooter's poking over Jesse's old pickup, making sure that rattle that's set up in the front end isn't anything important. Luke thinks it's nothing more than the old girl protesting against how many miles she's already driven, but his uncle wanted Cooter to take a look, so he brought the truck into town and neglected to mention to Jesse that there just happened to be another reason he wanted to make the trip. "Y'all have a nice day now." He turns toward the door.

"Dat, wait." There's the sound of desk scraping against floor, and Luke turns back to see Boss fighting with the girth of his own body in a sad attempt to stand. "You just wait a minute, Luke Duke."

"All right," he agrees, and not only because he never really intended to leave yet. Partly he stops walking so Boss will quit just about bisecting himself with the effort to chase after him. "I'm waiting. But a minute's about all I got, Boss. If I ain't going up to North Carolina to look for a job on the NASCAR circuit, I reckon I'd better get home and help Jesse with the chores. The sooner we get them done, the sooner we can come back to town and keep an eye on things." Luke assumes that same casual pose he had before, except his fingers are in his back pockets now. Every bit the bumbling country boy who has no idea what he's saying. "Like your bank that almost got robbed about a month back. You remember that, don't you, Boss?"

Boss remembers just fine. And when Luke goes back to the garage and doesn't pay Cooter for the work that doesn't need to be done to the truck, he's going to have to appeal to his friend to keep an eye on Jesse and Daisy for a bit. Because he's just about to get this here pass, and the process is going to have put ideas into Boss's head. But the Commissioner's not half the schemer he was a few years ago and it's not going to take a whole lot to stop any momentum he gets going.

"Sure, I remember that. But you was talking about getting a job on the NASCAR circuit?" Boss is just the picture of curiosity. He's finally found his feet, with a little bit of help (and more nonsense noises) from Rosco and pulled his cigar from his mouth to squint at Luke. "You ain't got an offer, have you, boy?"

No, and until this little conversation it hasn't even seemed like a completely real notion. Just an option in the abstract.

"Nope. But I got two of the best contacts in the business, Cale Yarborough and Bo." And even without them, he's a damned good mechanic. Oh yeah, and he can drive, too. He's the one that taught Bo. Sort of. He explained the pedals to him anyway, then squawked a lot and told him not to go so fast. Bo pretty much took it from there. "I reckon it won't be too hard to get me a job on the circuit."

Now he's getting the one-eyed squint, Boss walking around his desk to get closer, as though looking at Luke from a different angle will clear up all his confusion. Rosco's right on his heels, stooping low and otherwise looking like the defeated stooge that he is. If Luke was in the position to be generous, he might want to take Rosco with him to North Carolina. It would do him some good to get out from under Boss's thumb. But the poor fool would be lonely and expect Bo and Luke to keep him company when really, they've got better things to do.

"I ain't never heard you talk about getting a job on the NASCAR circuit before. How come you're talking about it now?"

He shrugs. "I miss Bo." It's nice to be able to give a straight-up honest answer at the end of a good shuck and jive.

Boss turns to look at Rosco, who just stares dumbly back at him. "Dat," he says when he realizes that he's not going to get any worthwhile input from that quarter. Rosco probably doesn't even know that he was meant to help Boss decide whether Luke's being genuine or honest or whether a Duke is trustworthy to begin with.

"All right," Boss says, heading back to his desk. "I'm going to give you a week. If you get a job up there, and can prove it to me by showing me signed contracts, I'll waive your probation." The commissioner scuttles back over to his desk like a white cockroach that's afraid if he moves too slowly, he'll get caught in the middle of the floor and squashed flat. "But if you don't get a job," he adds, bending over, putting down his cigar and pulling out one of those little forms in triplicate that Luke recognizes just as easily as he'd know his own face in the mirror. "You got to come back here," he slaps the form on the desk like punctuation to the threat he's about to issue. Luke's just quaking in his boot over the gesture. "And you ain't getting another pass, ever. Not until your probation is over." Scribbles of the pen he picks up from his desk, Rosco over his shoulder oohing over the roundness of the o or the length of the stems on the g's, or maybe that those pudgy little fingers can write at all.

He stands up and offers the paper to Luke. Doesn't let go of his end when Luke grabs on, holds it there between them like a triplicate handshake. "Deal?" he asks.

"Deal," Luke answers.

* * *

His cousin looks tired, harassed. His eyes like a storm that might just tear the roof off, his shoulders a series of knotted muscles. It's everything that Luke has looked like when he's come here spoiling for a fight. Hardly in the door, just dropped his duffle on the couch, which Bo has finally seen fit to put back where it belongs, still got his coat on. Smelling of exhaust and cold air and just about ready to hit Bo just for having the audacity to say hello to him.

"Take your pants off," Bo tells him.

"What?" Oh, Luke's fit to be tied, and there's no telling why. Could be as simple as the traffic he probably hit about an hour back on the far side of Charlotte, could be one heck of a lot more complicated than that. Could be justified or not, and Bo really can't care one way or another.

He unleashes a smile, the sort that no one, not even Luke, has ever been any good at resisting. "You heard me. Get your pants off."

Like the crack of Jesse's old whip, Luke's hands go to his hips, his head tips back and he glares out at Bo from underneath lowered eyebrows. He is not amused.

Which is fine, Bo's not joking.

"Look," he says, perfectly reasonably. Walks across the open space of his living room into the section that's supposed to be his kitchen. Sink and stove mark it off from the rest of the open area, but there are no walls. Makes it easy to keep talking to Luke, even as he pulls a red plastic cup out of his cabinet. Ugly thing from a set of four that he bought when he first moved here. It was supposed to be temporary, but he never has cared to go back out to some store and get himself a set of proper glasses. "We can bloody each other's noses first if you really want to." He turns on the spigot, sticks his hand under it. Nice and cold like it usually is this time of year. Pulls his hand back and puts the cup under it instead. "But I ain't as pretty with a bloody nose. And I know you like how pretty I am."

Luke looks at him like he's lost his mind.

"The way I got it figured," he says, turning off the water. He walks over to hand the cup to Luke. There might be any number of things bothering his cousin and some of them might even be legitimate. But he's also tired from his drive and probably thirsty, too. About the best thing Bo can do is offer him a drink, then tire him out well enough that he'll sleep. "You ain't gotten laid in almost two months." He'd better not have, anyway. "And it would be stupid to waste more time fighting before we get to the good stuff. So get your pants off."

Luke takes the water from him, which pulls one of his hands off his hip and takes away some of the appearance of a fighter that's just spoiling for someone or something to deck. Bo's going to have to figure out what's really wrong with him eventually, but he's not going to get anywhere until Luke's in a better mood.

He takes one step back from Luke, tips his head down to look at his feet, then scans up appraisingly. Then back down, or about halfway anyway. Smiles. Eyes back on Luke's face.

Luke takes a drink of water and raises an eyebrow at him: what?

He shrugs, lets his eyes trail down to Luke's belt buckle. Sees the whiteness of the tips of Luke's fingers on that hand that he's still digging into his hip.

"Your pants are still on," he points out. "I can't do nothing for you as long as they stay on."

"What," those same fingers loosen, do this strange sort of wiggling flex. He can hear Luke swallow, though he can't swear that the man ever took another drink. "Would you do for me if they were off?"

Anything.

But Luke is—Luke has loved him since he was too young to know he was being loved, has looked out for him and protected him when he needed it. But he's still Luke, troublemaker and schemer, and leaving him a blank slate like that to work with is never a good idea.

"What do you want me to do?" is barely any safer, especially when the words get thick in his throat. (But it's been almost two months since he got laid, too, and Luke's right there, looking and smelling just as much Luke as he ever did.)

Another deep swallow, then Luke's moving, looking for someplace to put the damned cup of water down. Bo just knocks it out of his hand – it's plastic and the dark blue carpet will hide the mess until it dries of its own accord – grabs him by the wrist and pulls.

Bedroom, where they don't even have to bother to close the door. And, he realizes just about the time that Luke's mouth finds that spot on his neck that makes him squirm, it's a damned good thing that they don't have to be quiet, either.


	21. Chapter 21

"He's got a great opportunity, you know."

Bo's friend Itchy or Itzkowitz, whatever he's going by now, has come over to stand next to his shoulder. Watching Luke watch Marshall Meade run through all his drills as a pit crew chief. Marshall's agreed to let Luke be in his garage, but he has to stay quiet and out of the way. It's a union garage, after all, and no civilian is allowed to have any say in anything that goes on there.

But the pit boss, who mostly gets called just plain Chief by everyone who works for him, seems to be a pretty good guy, or just one who likes Bo. Either way, he's been relatively generous to Luke, letting him explore the space and talk openly with everyone he meets. Now he's showing Luke the ropes of being a pit crew chief. Not, he's pointed out with all manner of sincerity, that he plans to give up his position anytime soon.

Which means he knows what Bo hasn't figured out, but the big man is nobody's fool. He can tell a NASCAR fan with designs of getting a job on the circuit from miles away. Probably seen a hundred boys like Luke over the years and, his demeanor announces, not too many of them have made the cut.

"Bo does?" Luke asks Itchy, his eyes still on the instruments that Meade is monitoring. Circular ones and square ones, with needles flicking and lights flashing. Not all that different from the cockpit of a helicopter and Luke has been in more than a few of those. He was never allowed to fly one but he reckons he could, if the occasion called for it.

"Yup," Meade answers, fussing with this or that on his console, and none of it makes any difference. No matter how many times he calibrates the speedometer that's getting electronic signals from the one in the car, Bo's not going to drive any faster. "He does."

"What kind of opportunity is that?" he asks instead of blurting out all the other thoughts in his head about how to really get the best speed out of Bo Duke.

Luke would like to tell Meade to quit fussing with all his toys and get down to the nuts and bolts of the matter – literally – and consider making some adjustments to the aerodynamics of the car itself, but he's on his best behavior. He's just a friendly, smiling, interested cousin to Bo. He has no union card of any type (and can hardly believe that he's thinking of getting one when he's a Duke who was raised to fight any system, including a union, that would limit him in any way) and therefore no say in anything that's going on around him.

Which is just plain strange, when his whole life he's been the one with the most say in what happens with Bo. Oh, sure, Jesse and Lavinia were their guardians and they loved Bo with all their hearts. But when it came to looking after Bo on a minute-by-minute basis, Luke was the one who did it. And when it came to racing cars, it was always Luke tuning the car beforehand, checking the timing, looking over Cooter's shoulder if any serious repairs had to be made, then going back and redoing them himself. Which makes keeping his knowledge to himself utterly counterintuitive and he reminds himself that there's nothing really at stake right now. Bo's just driving practice laps, as much for his crew as for himself, and is in no danger.

Still, the aerodynamics of the car are fighting him, getting in the way of Bo's skill.

Itchy, standing next to him and also watching the chief poke at his gauges, kind of shifts on his feet and runs a hand through his hair. In here, where the air is warm and there are more flammable materials contained under one roof than there are in any fireworks store, there's no smoking. From the looks of him, Itchy suffers from being indoors quite a bit.

Meade looks away from his gauges to meet Luke's eyes, then to look over at the crew member. Kind of dismisses Itchy with the slightest bit of a nod, and the skinny guy is gone.

"This hasn't gone public yet." Luke has no idea what Meade is talking about, but he knows when he's being warned that he should keep what he's about to learn to himself. He nods at the words and what they don't quite say. Itchy is outside now, Luke can see him through the glass in the garage doors. Didn't bother to pause long enough to get a jacket, bony, bare arms wrapped around himself and a lit cigarette hanging out of his lips. "But Lemuel Anderson's planning on retiring at the end of this season. Which would make Bo the senior driver on the team."

Which isn't a whole lot of anything – Bo's been a better driver than Lem from the time he got to Mooresville. Being able to call himself senior driver isn't any kind of an opportunity for a Hazzard boy that doesn't much care for or believe in the usefulness of hierarchy.

But it probably means more money and more sponsorships, maybe more face time in front of the cameras. (Which ought to make the owners of the team very, very happy. Bo's face is several times prettier than Lem's any day.) And it obviously is supposed to be an important milestone for Bo to reach.

"But," Meade says, touches Luke's shoulder to draw his attention away from where he's been watching Itchy take long pulls on his cigarette, then shiver as the white smoke pours out of his mouth and nose. "He's got to show them what he's made of this season. Because Doug likes your cousin, but Bo can be sort of…" Lazy. Luke knows it, he's lived next to it and taken up the slack for it for most of his life. "Erratic. He gets discouraged sometimes. And other times it's like he just ain't concentrating."

Well, yeah. Any teacher that Bo had ever had in school would have written exactly those same words on his report card. They apply easily to math and history; it's just unexpected that anyone in NASCAR would say those things.

"I'm just telling you because you're his cousin."

See, and the man has no idea what he's doing. What he's saying and who he's saying it to, because sure, this is a union garage and every single one of the men in this place knows what that means, what the rules are and how to follow them.

But none of them know about Dukes, and how they are far tighter than any bunch of union workers that don't do anything more than work together. And that no one ever says anything bad about Bo Duke to his cousin Luke, at least not unless they like bruised faces and bloody noses.

But he just nods his head and goes back to watching Itchy suffer in the cold.

* * *

There have been a sum total of about three minutes in the day when he felt like Luke was really here, really with him. The rest of it has been just about like it is now, with Bo sitting at the table they chose in the middle of the Mooresville Pub, while Luke's over in the corner talking to some guys from the Ranier-Lundy team. Guys Bo hardly even knows, maybe has met once or twice, but Luke's talking to them like they're old and well-liked friends that he's been meaning to spend time with, if only life hadn't gotten in the way. Bo can almost imagine then trading tales of the women and cars that they've each loved since the last time they got together.

Which is ridiculous; Luke only met them the one time, back when Cale Yarborough brought the two Duke boys up to the Illinois 500 to play at crewing a race, four or five years back. Not that that's keeping him from all but abandoning Bo to spend time with them.

_I'll be right back,_ Luke said when he left Bo here at the table by himself. Made him feel like the unwanted younger cousin all over again, what with the utter lack of invitation for Bo to come along. _Won't be gone longer than the flick of a cat's tail._

Three minutes, maybe less. In the garage of all places; Bo had come in covered in a thick layer of sweat, shivering because the air outside was cold, even if it was hot in the car. Frustrated as hell because the car wasn't the General and wouldn't respond the way he wanted it to on the track, and because the damn coveralls were clinging to his back with sweat but he had to leave them on for his next run in a few minutes. Luke had taken one look at him and known things that only Luke would. Took him aside, but not too far, not out of the sight of any of the rest of the team. Just a corner that was a dimmer and dustier than the rest of the place, and he'd grabbed him behind the neck.

A million thoughts through Bo's mind, most of them about how he was going to be fired for what Luke was about to do, and maybe that wouldn't be so bad. But these guys on the circuit, some of them anyway, would feel perfectly justified in killing both Duke boys for what they were.

But it wasn't a kiss, wasn't ever going to be a kiss. Just their foreheads together, his covered in sweat and slippery, Luke's dry and warm and comforting in all those ways that being around Luke always had been. Smell of exhaust and motor oil, but underneath that, if he tried, he could smell the smells of Luke – laundry soap and aftershave and home.

"Listen to me, Bo," he'd said. "It ain't nothing you're doing wrong. It's the spoiler, it ain't high enough. It's fighting you." He'd nodded, his hair and Luke's probably tangling together with the gesture. "Don't you let it get you down. You pretend it's the Cedar City Classic with them Harkins brothers calling you a Hazzard rube, and you show them," the Harkins brothers or the Reed team, Bo wasn't entirely clear on which way that was supposed to go, "what you can do."

It had been nice, just that fleeting bit of time with Luke, to stand there for a bit afterward and try to look him in the eyes, but they were too close to see much more than a blur of blue.

And then the day had gone right back to what it had been before, just the memory of those moments and the other ones of the night before, calming Luke down with sex. It had taken more than one try to get him all the way to mellow. Tough work, but someone had to do it.

And now there's no reason in the world that Luke should be wasting what time they could have alone together by going off and acting all friendly-like to near strangers.

Home, should have insisted on going there when they left the track. Luke's not in a foul mood now like he was last night, but Bo would have enjoyed making him happy again all the same. Or letting Luke make him happy, or anything other than sitting here by himself, nursing a beer and watching Itchy and Don come through the door. Any chance of spending time here alone with Luke is gone. And leaving is pretty well out of the question for a few hours now.

"Hazzard!" Itchy greets like it's such a surprise to find him here. "I got first round."

Yeah, sure, fine. He can't swear that he cares about the beer, though he reckons he'll drink whatever's set in front of him. Isn't really concentrating on the conversation, even when Lem shows up, followed by Chief, the latter of whom congratulates him on how well he drove the second time he went out. All he can do is watch the way Luke's making himself at home here in Mooresville, and oddly – resent it.

* * *

"What about Jesse," Bo asks. "And the farm?"

_What about them_ , Luke wants to fire back. But he can't because in truth it's a pretty damned valid question. Jesse and the farm, which have been pretty much the entirety of Luke's focus for over three years (okay, Hannah was tangled up in those years, too, but she was part and parcel of taking care of Jesse), and at the center of every excuse he ever gave Bo.

He wishes, and it's a stupid wish but pretty persistent for being so stupid, that they were driving down some dirt road with unknown hazards ahead and lights and sirens behind. That type of scenario always makes these conversations go more easily. Or faster, or there's always some great big consequence waiting to happen if they don't make peace with each other almost the minute they find themselves at odds.

Whereas right now he's stuck on a couch, halfway wants to be on a bed, and trying to explain to Bo how he's got the best news for the two of them since they finished building the General Lee. They ought to be having victory sex by now, but somehow Bo's not taking this good news entirely well.

"I reckon between us we'll be earning enough to pay all of Jesse's bills and get him some help on the farm. It'll probably be better without me there."

Because Luke has talked himself into a job, and it's only his third day here. All he needs is a signed contract to take back to Hazzard and he's free.

Not that his cousin asks about his probation and how he's going to get himself shed of it. Which is just as well, it gives him one fewer distraction.

"Bo, it's a chance for us to be together."

The couch shifts as Bo flops down onto it in a way he'd never dare to back in the old farmhouse. And that alone seems like a good enough reason for his cousin to be happy, that the two of them can live in a place where the furniture isn't older than they are and they don't have to worry about destroying great-grandma Dukes' heirlooms.

"I know that," Bo answers in a voice that's just about as deflated as his slouch.

"Bo." Cold. Suddenly he's cold even though if anything, the apartment's thermostat has been set a little bit high for his blood. He stands, has to move. Takes two steps and turns back toward the couch. "You was the one that wanted us to be together."

Bo squints at him. "I do, Luke." Annoyed tone that could come from any number of sources, really. Luke nods in some sort of agreement that this conversation isn't a whole lot of fun. He looks away from Bo, out the bay window to see Lake Norman glimmering with the artificial lights from all the residences built up around it. It's not like the natural banks of a lonely little pond back home, but it's a nice enough lake. He could learn to like living near it. Might want to close the blinds a bit more often than Bo seems to. Then again, he figures he'd also wash the windows once every few months or so. He's pretty sure Bo hasn't done it since the day he moved here.

Bo's huff draws him back. Both of his hands running through that blonde hair, clasping at the back of his neck. Bo's antsy, too. Really, this would all have gone a lot better if they could have had celebration sex instead of – what? An argument? Feels like it, even if they're not actively disagreeing.

"It ain't that," Bo tells him. So, that's good. It's not that he's not wanted.

"What is it, then?"

"It's just sudden, is all." Any less sudden and Luke would be officially confined to Hazzard for at least three more years. More than that if Boss could make any of his crazy schemes stick.

"So if I'd told you today that I might get a job, then broken it to you tomorrow that I actually had a job, it would be okay?" It's an attempt, maybe, to break the tension. To be funny, to give them an excuse to stop acting like they're upset with each other when they're not. Or shouldn't be, anyway.

Luke sits back down on the couch because words are not always their friends, but hard things always get easier for Bo when they're close enough to touch. He's about to apologize, even if he's not sure what exactly he has to be sorry for, when Bo gets around to opening his mouth again.

"I guess whenever I thought about us being on the NASCAR circuit I figured we'd be together. Not me working for Reed and you working for Ranier-Lundy." For Cale Yarborough's team. Finally, he's gotten the job he went looking for more than three years back. He can't say that he's sorry he didn't get it back then. If he'd left first, there's no telling what Bo might have gotten himself mixed up in back in Hazzard. Might have succumbed to one of Boss's schemes. (Might have found himself a true Hazzard girl to settle down with. Might even have made it work.)

"Just because I'm working for Cale don't mean I ain't going to be rooting for you." But there are complications, of course. He's going to have to do his best to make sure that Cale has the best chance of winning. He's just going to have to trust that Bo can outdrive the older, more experienced driver, even if Cale's got some mechanical advantages. Which is pretty easy to do, really. Bo can outdrive the wind if he's of a mind to. "It's a way for us to be together. That's all it is."

Bo huffs again, drops his hands from where they've been clasped behind his neck. Lets the left one drape across Luke's shoulders, pulls him closer like he's no more than a stuffed animal to cuddle with.

"It'll be okay, Bo," he says and it's nothing at all like the sex he'd hoped for tonight when Bo kisses his temple, sighs and settles in next to him to stare at the wall and think.

* * *

He tells himself that it's just that he'd always imagined Luke having an entirely different role if he joined the NASCAR circuit. Driver or backup driver or co-driver, even if he's always known that cars on the big track have no room for a second person. So maybe pit crew chief or chief mechanic, but not ever, even in his most desperate dreams, a jack man for Cale Yarborough. That's all that's bugging him.

He'd like to tell Luke that, too, maybe in a better way than he did last night, maybe with more details and better clarity. But he's not sure it'd do any good; might make things worse. He can't shake the feeling that Luke spent the early part of last night comforting him for – he doesn't even know what, exactly. Surprising him, maybe. Instead of him congratulating Luke which would have made more sense and led to better places. Because the latter part of the night, instead of sex, featured Luke on his half of the bed, Bo on his and neither of them exactly sleeping. Dozing, maybe, in between bouts of fitfulness.

Luke hasn't accompanied him to the gym or the track today. Makes sense, he's going to start work for another team sometime in the coming weeks, which probably means he won't be welcome anyway.

Word spreads just as fast in NASCAR's circles as it ever did in Hazzard's, even without the help of Boss's cousin Maybelle working a telephone switchboard and eavesdropping. By the time he's done being pushed by Butch and shadowed by Don at the gym, word has beat him to the track about Luke's defection. (But that's not what it is, and working for Cale Yarborough isn't all that much of a problem, really. Not the way Luke tells it and Bo believes him, if only because he's used to trusting him.)

"Itzkowitz," Chief Meade says as soon as Bo enters the garage for an afternoon of laps. "Run drills outside with Smith. Thompson and Duncan," who are part of Lem's crew, not his and not technically under Chief's command, "go back to your own bay." And also not necessarily supposed to here, so it's easy for Chief to send them away. "Conway," he hesitates there, because Harry Conway isn't exactly crew and he isn't exactly management. He's got something to do with the offices and Doug Reed, does something with scheduling or something. Bo's not sure what he is, but he's the last one left in the garage with him and Chief, and is clearly not wanted here. But like most of the people who work here, he likes to dream of driving in Daytona (and winning, because what's the point of a dream where you don't win?) and spends as much of his time in the garage as he can get away with. "Could you do me a huge favor and get me a coffee from upstairs?" Which isn't really upstairs; there's no second story on the garage. But there is an office up in one of the boxes at the top of the grandstand, and that's where the coffee is. Unless, that is, a man is willing to put up with instant and hot water. Which Chief usually does, but Conway seems perfectly willing to run off and get the big man a cup of coffee that he doesn't need. Maybe he figures it'll get him some time behind the wheel and maybe he has just figured out that he needs to go now.

Why he has to go – well that's a really good question.

The garage door slides down with everyone else on the other side of it while Bo does his best not to pick at his own nails. Aunt Lavinia always used to scold him for that, said it was disrespectful to look at his hands when someone was talking to him, and if mangled his own nails he wouldn't get any sympathy when his fingers hurt while doing chores.

"Duke," Chief says and if there was any doubt that whatever's about to happen is serious, it's dispelled now. He can't swear that Chief has called him anything more serious than 'Hazzard' since those early months that he was on the team. And mostly, Chief just calls him plain old Bo. "We're gonna need a new spotter this year." The pit crew chief picks up the time clock that he uses on a daily basis from the desk in front of him and shakes it near his ear like it's quit working and he's trying to figure out why. "Champ's just not as quick as he used to be." Which doesn't matter, really. Bo never listens to his spotter anyway, just drives on instinct and imagines Luke's voice in his head telling him what to look out for and what to do. (Half the time he'd swear Luke's telling him to turn left, as if there's really any alternative on a track where all the cars are moving counter-clockwise.) "You figure your cousin would take the job if we offered it?"

Sure Luke would. Luke would rather work for Reed, and spotter's as good a job as jack man. It's just not a better job and Luke should have a better job. The best job, really, and though Chief has seniority here on the team, Luke's got seniority in Bo's life and his driving. He's won more races with Luke than with anybody.

"I don't know," is about as honest as he can be. "I ain't Luke. You'd have to ask him."

Chief picks up another of the gadgets on his desk, twists some knob or other and Bo's really wishing his hands were dirty so he could get away with wiping them on his jeans. Or that there was anything in the garage that he'd have a good excuse to tinker with, because it's not fair. This is an uncomfortable conversation and he's at a disadvantage because he can't fidget. It's like a childhood day of standing in the barn, listening to Uncle Jesse whip Luke (who always went first because all three of them knew that the old man's arm got tired after the first one and the second one wasn't nearly as mean or as long) and waiting for his turn.

Chief puts down whatever it was he was holding, something palm-sized and black but it looks heavy, and nods his head as though Bo has said something definitive, when as far as he knows he's just been standing here feeling lost.

"Not enough, huh?" Oh, it probably would be. Luke might like the solitude of sitting up there in that high perch, watching the race from the skies and telling Bo what to do. It might, honestly, be the next best thing to having him in the passenger seat. There'd be no complaining and it would be almost like Luke marrying Hannah and raising a family. A sacrifice that he'd quietly make. The two Duke boys would live together and maybe on off days they'd go out for a drive together, but it wouldn't be much of a life. Not for Luke. "Well, there's been talk about creating a new position. Some of the other teams are doing it – Hayes and McDuffie and Melling, I think – and it seems to be working for them."

Bo looks out through the glass doors of the garage, wishes he was out there with Itchy and Bubs, horsing around when they're supposed to be drilling, instead of standing here with no place to put his hands. If Luke were here, Bo would sling an arm across his shoulders and at least then he'd be able to lean. And let his mind wander, trusting Luke to handle whatever it is that Chief's going to say next. These negotiations never have been his strong suit; all he's ever wanted to do is drive.

"Look, it doesn't take much to see how much Luke means to you," then again, that comment brings him right back to attention. "And that he's good for you."

"He's my cousin," Bo says, and it's a pathetically obvious statement, trying to masquerade as distraction. To keep Chief from following too far down that line of thought. "We was raised together." More stupidity, Chief has known that since those early days when his every word was about his wonderful cousin Luke who had done the lion's share of building the General Lee.

_(Racing was just driving in circles. He couldn't swear when he figured that out, but somewhere in the early part of his third full season on the circuit, it had become a crushing fact. Racing was just driving in circles._

_Winning was better than not winning and maybe that was why he could still make himself get in the car. For that half hour in Victory Lane, standing in front of cameras and smiling, wondering if there was any chance at all that Luke would be out there somewhere, watching. Hoping that he would and then what? Call him to congratulate him like he never had before? Maybe, and that was where the fantasies started. They always ended with him and Luke lying down together, but the location changed. Sometimes it was here in Mooresville, but more often it was back home in Hazzard. Two big boys squeezed into one twin bed and touching everywhere because there was no way not to._

_But no matter how many circles he drove in, Luke never called. Not that Bo made any important phone calls either, but they were Luke's rules; he'd made them and it made sense that only he could break them._

_(Or maybe Bo didn't want Jesse making an excuse for why Luke couldn't talk to him. Life had gotten marginally more tolerable when he'd stopped forcing Luke to reject him over and over again.)_

_So he did his circles, but the blush was off the rose. Or maybe it had never really been there. Whichever way it worked out, NASCAR wasn't half of what he imagined it would be.)_

"Well, if he's going to be working for a NASCAR team, we want it to be us." And not, Chief doesn't say, some competitor's team where he and Doug Reed will have to worry about secrets getting shared with the wrong people. Which would never happen, and everyone here ought to know it. Duke integrity wouldn't allow for it. (But they only know Bo, not Luke.) "And we want you to be happy. So how about we make him pit crew coach, working right under me. He'd handle the crew, and I'd just have to tell him what I wanted. It'd make things easier on me during the race and probably make us quicker."

It's… it's a good offer. About as good as Luke's likely to get, as new to the circuit as he is. Men don't usually jump ranks like that. There'll be some resentment from Itchy and the rest of the crew, but Luke can handle that without even trying. He's been telling people that ought to outrank him what to do since he was a teen and took over primary responsibility for the Duke family's moonshine runs.

"You're still going to have to ask Luke," he says.

"Bring him by tomorrow," Chief instructs. "And don't let him sign no contracts with Ranier-Lundy before then."

Yes, sir.


	22. Chapter 22

"I got two things I got to tell you." Bo's got that silly-serious look on his face, his head tipped down like he's looking at Luke over the top of invisible reading glasses. It's one of those annoying habits that accommodates their height difference, even if there's no good reason he has to. Luke's not that much shorter than him.

By the time Bo got home this afternoon, Luke had scrubbed his tiny kitchen from top to bottom. Sure, he's heard about this Mathilda that Bo had in on Tuesday and who'll be back next Tuesday, but she doesn't live here. Her meals aren't cooked in this kitchen and she hasn't lived with Bo her whole life. She may be a wonderful (hired in and paid for) housekeeper, but doesn't know just how much of a mess Bo Duke can cause.

Besides, Luke stayed behind today with no real plans for what he was going to do with himself, and the novelty of having a television in the house wore off well before noon. He turned the damn thing off and put himself to work.

Not that Bo cares or has even noticed. He's too busy trying to be serious and tell Luke two things.

He opens the refrigerator and looks around. Figures that if there are two things, at least one of them has to be what's making Bo try so hard to be serious, and that a beer might help Bo with the telling and him with the listening. Unfortunately they only have one beer between them; fortunately they have a lifetime of sharing. Luke closes the refrigerator, twists the cap off with his fingers, hands the bottle over to Bo and tosses the cap in the general direction of the trash. Not very aerodynamic, doesn't quite make it. Oh well, Luke's the one that cleaned this kitchen; he's earned the right to dirty it.

He waits for Bo to take his swig, hand the beer back and lean back against the counter before he does his own leaning against the sink opposite from it and holds up two fingers as a reminder of how many things Bo has to tell him. Puts away a swallow of the beer.

"First one is, I'm supposed to bring you with me to the garage tomorrow." Doesn't seem like such terrible news. There's no real good reason Bo should be reaching for the bottle to take another drink. Luke gives it to him anyway. "And you ain't supposed to sign no contracts with Ranier-Lundy before then, because Chief's going to offer you a job."

"All right." Easy enough to agree to. And it doesn't really explain that serious look. "You know what position they're going to offer?" Maybe it's that. Maybe he'll be chief oil-stain cleaner and general mopper of floors. Not that he couldn't find a way to make that work if he had to. Like when the pee-wee league baseball coach put him in the outfield and he swore he wasn't going to play a single minute out there until Jesse took him aside and told him that everyone had to start somewhere, even Lou Gehrig (who was Jesse's hero, not Luke's), but that if he really was good enough and could prove it, he'd move into a better position in time. Of course, the same coach that had put Luke out in left field had also put the then long-legged Enos Strate at shortstop, so there was a remarkably brief interim before the coach recognized the error of his ways. Luke found himself in one of the key infield positions and good-natured Enos spent a lot of time cheering him on from the sidelines.

It might not happen quite that fast here in NASCAR, but he's not eight years old anymore, either. He can do his time until a better opening comes along.

"Something new. Can't remember the name exactly," Bo takes himself another deep swallow of the beer they're meant to be sharing. "But it's like, running the pit crew during races. Under Chief somehow and I ain't sure how it's going to work." Of course not. Bo doesn't know a lot about Generals and Lieutenants and majors and the poor lowly Sergeants that do the actual fighting. Luke's been the ranking man in the field before; he knows how to handle himself under such circumstances.

And he knows how to get the bottle of beer back before all that's left is backwash, too. Bo tips the bottle up like he's going to take another swig, and Luke grabs it just before it hits his lip. A dribble goes down Bo's front.

"Luke," the complaint comes, like it's some kind of a terrible disaster to get a little beer on his shirt. Luke smirks back at him and takes a deep swallow. The he hands it back to his pouting cousin and gestures for Bo to go ahead and finish it. There's probably less than half left anyway.

Bo puts the beer down and pulls his shirt up and off over his head. Wipes his wet belly with it and sneers at Luke, but it's all in good fun.

"You said there was two things," Luke reminds him. Watches as he tosses the wet shirt over in the general direction of where the washer is hidden in the wall and it floats to the ground less than halfway there. Momentary hesitation while Bo decides whether he's going to go pick it up.

"Cousin," Luke says in that voice he uses when he needs Bo to listen to him, to stop goofing off and slow the car down before he gets them both killed.

Another drink of beer, apparently, is necessary before the second thing can be said. He waits for Bo to swallow and wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, watches him pick at the label on the bottle. Watches his lips move without sensible words and waits for his cousin to look up and talk to him for real.

"What if I didn't want to stay on the NASCAR circuit?" Well, that would make things interesting, anyway. Luke would have a job working on a team that Bo no longer drives for. And they might have to find a cheaper apartment with less of a view, because Luke's not likely to make the kind of money Bo does now. Living in Mooresville without Bo driving for the Reed team would be dumb, but it would probably be better than—

"What if think I want to go home?"

He gave up the rest of the beer too easily. However, his day of cleaning left him with the knowledge that there's some Jack Daniels in a cabinet (that would do better to house some real glasses or otherwise useful dishes), that's unopened. Which makes perfect sense to him; must have been a gift from someone who didn't know better. Dukes respect other makers of whiskey, but only drink their own. Still, that Jack would make swallowing Bo's words a little easier.

"You have to more than think it, Bo. You have to know it. It ain't nothing you can play at and then go back on it."

A slow nod from Bo. "Because of Jesse?" Another drink to the hell that they are going to unleash on themselves.

"We got to tell Jesse either way, Bo." Seems like his cousin might have been harboring fantasies that they could live together here in Mooresville and come up with some story about why they've decided to do it now when they haven't done it before.

They've got to tell him the truth, wherever they decide to live. But it might just be easier on them if they could retreat to Mooresville afterward. (Harder on Daisy, though, and with her upcoming divorce and the way she's helped them and kept their secret, that's not fair. No matter what they do, they have to look out for Daisy.)

Bo sighs, another nod, this one trying to be brave. It fails.

"That part'll be okay, Bo." He wants to put an arm around him, maybe offer up a hug. Tell him to quit worrying and just maybe ask him why he keeps finding ways to take all these job offers that Luke's getting badly. "The real problem is, if I can take a signed contract back to Boss Hogg by Wednesday, he's going to release me from my probation. If I don't, he ain't going to give me no more passes. If we go back without me having a job on NASCAR, I got to stay."

Bo stares at him, his jaw slack like it always is when he gets surprised and isn't sure what he wants to settle on doing next. Another pull on what's left of the beer and his eyebrows come down. He's decided to be annoyed. As if it's all that much of a surprise that Boss would throw a catch into every negotiation he's ever been a part of.

"Why'd you let him do that?" As if he had a choice. "And why didn't you tell me sooner?"

"You didn't ask?" may not be the best answer, but it is, at least, the truth. "Does it matter? You want to quit, then we'll got home. But maybe you want to see what it's like, first. You and me working together here and living together. We can always go home next year."

"Yeah, all right," Bo agrees. He doesn't have to look quite so miserable about it.

* * *

A hug in the kitchen has turned into this – two of them in the bed with the blinds drawn all the way down tight, wearing nothing but their skins. He's on his back, knees up and spread, hands exploring chest hair while Luke's over him, settled between his legs. Arms under Bo's shoulder blades, fingers cradling his shoulders and kissing. Just that, all gentle and careful; strange. He would almost swear that things between him and Luke couldn't ever be like this. They've been gentle with each other outside of the sex, but here, in the build up, there's usually roughness, shoving. Even if it's not mean, it's usually rugged, at least.

Luke's asking him if he's okay through kisses, as though he's taken a fall and hit the ground hard. So much caution in the touch, like they're trying to make up with each other when they haven't even really fought.

Belly muscles contracting, his hands on Luke shoulders gripping hard enough to pull himself up a little, to try to kiss Luke harder or more or—

Luke backs away, bound and determined to make this thing slow and careful, maybe to give him all the time in the world to rethink what he wants to do, but damn it, this is supposed to be sex, or leading there at least. Just because Luke likes to think at ridiculous times like this doesn't mean Bo should have to. Like always, Luke can do enough of that for the both of them.

"Luke," he complains, even though he doesn't precisely want to talk either. "More."

A snicker, hard to see it that close together, but he feels the puff of air against his cheek, then Luke's head ducks, chin toward chest and there's nothing to see but hair anyway.

"Luke." They're never going to get anywhere wasting time this way. Especially when it's likely to lead to that fight they haven't yet had. He claws at those shoulders in his grip, all muscle and bone and shifts around with the thought of sitting up, but Luke's grip on him is firm. (And in truth, he doesn't want him to let go.)

Luke's head comes back up, fuzz of hair and sharp blue eyes. Bo presses his head back against the pillows to get some distance, sees Luke's smile. Genuine, not sarcastic or smirking. "I can do that," he explains, and then the kiss is back, sudden as a gunshot in an autumn forest. Hands under his back pulling him down, making them more even in height, making the kiss better, but the rest of the fit isn't right anymore.

Bo's hands slide around Luke's shoulders, knob of bone at the top, then down his chest in light touches, just tips of fingers. Luke shifts his weight lower against the tickle, bringing more of Bo's hands into contact with his skin. More of a rub that way and that's okay. It gets them closer, makes Luke's wants known. Up until now this could have been comfort instead of sex.

His hands slip around Luke's waist, find the curve at the small of his back, start there. Rubbing and pressing, pulling Luke down to him as his hands make their way up his ribcage. Changes the angle of the kiss, the angle of everything as their chests rub together, no soft breasts between to cushion them.

Girls have their uses, their rounded parts and the things that make them easy to be with, a hell of a lot easier than being with Luke. But girls can't do this, can't take the grip they have on his shoulders and pull him with them as they roll over, can't make him moan when somehow the kiss is never lost.

He doesn't want it to end up this way, doesn't want to be the one on top. Not this close to Luke acting all caring and gentle, treating him like he's somehow broken and in need of kindness and sacrifice. But for now, this position allows Luke the freedom to touch at will while Bo gains control of everything else.

No more soft, sweet kisses; he presses his mouth against Luke's, taking what is offered and asking for more. Hand on the back of his head, cupping, stroking his hair, petting. Like he's trying to calm him. Damn fool.

He cants his hips down, stripping this whole thing to the basics, back to the beginning, where everything was just instinct and feel. Luke was only seventeen to Bo's fifteen, they were young and inexperienced, but they were smart enough to let their bodies do their thinking for them.

Luke's hands, both of them with their wide, strong fingers, roughened by new callouses that Bo can't swear he ever had before, stroking down his back. The kiss finally opens up, tipping over to that forgetful place where he's not a little cousin but a lover, capable of handling Luke's strength. Warm, unhesitant grip around his waist, pulls him back down to rub again. Setting a rhythm that's as old as time, as familiar as any he's ever known. Sweat pearling up on his chest and shoulders and face, more breath than kiss between them now.

He pulls back, fighting against Luke's grip to make room between them. Not an easy task, Luke wants him right where he is, and he can understand the silent argument. Rubbing is nice, it's good enough and they could do just that. They could pretend to be teenagers all over again and it would be all right. Mostly, anyway, if this were a different day that didn't start out with all the cautious, gentle touching Luke could muster.

Sideways, sliding that way is not expected. Luke's hands slip just enough to let him reach over toward the windowsill where the hand cream sits upright in its pinkish bottle, the cap lost in the heat of a few nights ago. Luke gets the idea and loosens his grip just enough for Bo to move. Finger pads tracing up and down the backs of his legs, just making idle patterns and waiting for him to get his head together enough to reach the cream, but they're not helping him concentrate. (They are motivating him, however. Ticklish and hot and damn ready.)

His long fingers get a grip, the bottle has gotten light. Almost empty, but that's of no concern, really. There's enough for now and by this point he has a few more bottles in waiting. He's been stockpiling them, without even really realizing that's what he's doing, since that first time he and Luke used it. Little bottles of hope that he's hidden away in wait for the day Luke finally came to him for real.

Now that it's finally happened, he should stand ready to settle into it, to let it develop into what he's always imagined them having here in Mooresville. He can understand Luke's confusion right now, but that has no place in what they have come to the bedroom to do. Once they cross that threshold, thoughts are supposed to stop.

He pours some cream into his palm, same as he's done since the first time Lem recommended it to him, but the other driver would be pretty damn surprised to know what he does with it next. He surprises Luke, too, by wrapping a hand around him and stroking; seems their positions made Luke think this was going the other way.

Bo raises up, guides himself slowly down, feeling the pressure and the stretch inside him, feeling the way Luke's pressing his hips back into the bed instead of up like he really wants to. Taking their time, letting Bo get used to the feel. Still for a moment, then Bo raises up slightly on his knees.

Luke's hands are wrapped around his hips, loose grip that's slipping on sweat and not telling him what to do. Giving him room to set his own pace. His hands are on Luke's shoulders, just resting there. He leans forward, awkward angle that makes everything that much more tenuous (but everything in his life always has been and between the two of them, he and Luke have always found a way to hang on anyway) and gets a kiss that can't stay, can't be deep. No time for that. He sits upright and starts to move again. Forces himself to get an early, steady rhythm, to get good position and not push to get to the finish line too quickly. (But to take command, to make clear that this is his race to win or lose.)

Maddeningly steady, Luke's hands digging into his hips and Bo knows the point where it becomes too much and too little all at once – can't sustain itself like that. Luke pulling him down harder, his back arching to push his hips up and that's good, that's great really—

Finally, Luke has taken command; not necessarily something Bo always wants, but tonight it's important.

Shift, grind, rub, gasp – Luke's hand curls around him to stroke, and it's not going to take much. He leans forward, ruins the momentum, gets a stuttered grunt from Luke for that, but he wants another kiss. It is accepted – the sentiment anyway, it's not much of a kiss – then a broad hand settles on his chest, shoving him back to sitting, and the stroking starts again. Reminding him of what they were doing before he got the fool notion to show affection. Rhythm gets found again; Luke smiles his thanks, and that almost does it right there. Bo's hands gripping around Luke's ribcage, Luke's (the one that's not wrapped around him) in his own hair as he gasps, hips thrusting up to meet Bo's. A strangled cry somewhere between the two of them, and it makes sense when he finds himself in Luke's arms, held close, wide hand running itself through his hair with all gentleness and affection.

It ends as it always has.

Now he just has to convince Luke to start all over again, this time with Bo in command. In a minute, once he catches his breath.

* * *

"Lost Sheep two calling Lost Sheep one," crackles back at him over the pickup's CB. Bo's been beyond his sight for an hour or so; got bored driving at the pickup's top speed and raced on ahead. No real worries for him, he's got that Bo Duke smile and blonde charm. No cop (outside of Hazzard's county lines) will hold him responsible or give him a ticket like a love note reminding him of their encounter. Luke, on the other hand, doesn't have anything but an old, filthy pickup and a note in his pocket like an excuse for the teacher. _Yes, I am a bad boy that's supposed to be confined to the borders of the county I was born in, but I do have permission to roam today. Not to go too fast, though, so I'll take that ticket that accuses me of speeding and otherwise recklessly endangering the well-behaving public that is supposed to be safe from my menace._

"You got Lost Sheep two here." Barely here, maybe. There's got to be some pretty good distance between them for the radio to crackle and spit quite as much as it does.

"Pit stop at exit 21? There's gas and food here." Which means Bo is already off the road, probably halfway through a hamburger. That part's a shame, because Luke would like to tell him that gas is fine but they don't need food. Jesse's expecting them in a couple of hours and there will undoubtedly be a gallon or two of rattlesnake chili waiting for them, along with another gallon of potato salad. They'll get plenty to eat when they get home.

(Then again, Bo can eat now and it won't even make a dent on his appetite later. That boy can put away food like a grizzly emerging from the den in spring.)

"Be there in about ten minutes," maybe more, since he's trying to stick reasonably close to the speed limit. Always makes him feel like a kid on a tricycle when he does it, but outside of Hazzard there are real police with real skills, not Rosco and his band of very silly men. The cops out here could probably catch him and make the charges stick. "Go easy on them hamburgers, Jesse's going to have dinner for us when we get home." It won't hurt to warn him, even if the advice ultimately goes unheeded. "Lost Sheep two, out."

He flips the visor down; this time of year it's awfully early when the sun gets low in the sky. They should have gotten an earlier start, or maybe no start at all. He's still not sure how he feels about this.

Not, he tells himself, for his own concerns, but for Bo's. His cousin has asked for a leave of absence from the team to go home for a week. It wouldn't have mattered a whole lot if he'd done it back in December, when the last season was freshly over. Now that they're only three weeks from the opening of the new season in Daytona and Bo's supposed to be in serious training, it's a harder sell. He's good enough to miss some practices, everyone's admitted that. But there's a pretty big risk to what they're doing when Bo's got to jump out of the starting gate with good numbers in order to hold onto his favor with Reed and become their senior driver next season.

If he stays on the circuit. He'd be a fool to leave now, but it's what he says he wants to do.

Luke, for once, feels like he has little to lose. His unsigned contract bulges in his pocket; he's been granted the week to consider the offer, so long as he does not seek employment with another team. The position will wait for him or go unfilled. He can't swear on it, but he figures Boss will let him go with just the written proof of an offer. The crotchety old Commissioner will probably be happiest without any Duke boys to play on his lawn.

The dropping sun catches in all the grime caked onto the pickup's windshield. This stop will be good for him, he can clean it off. In the meantime, he needs to squint at the signs along the side of the road to see the exit markers. He's still a few miles north of Bo.

Maybe he's driving a perfectly legal fifty-five because he's not really in a hurry. He won't be sorry to catch up with hi cousin and spend a few minutes together before they have to get back into their separate vehicles, but overall, he can't swear that he's terribly eager to get home, rattlesnake chili aside.

Telling Jesse, that's the part he's not too excited about, even if he's the one that's always said they have to do it. Should have done it long ago, he was right about that and he's right about having to do it now. Even if the thought makes his gut squirm.

But, he tells himself again, his greatest concern is not for himself, but for Bo. Jesse and his whip have never had any fantasies about Luke being anything but a handful of trouble. Bo, though, he's always been Jesse's baby. Charming and sweet and good-natured, pretty and pure.

It's a lot harder to face someone with bad news when they expect only the best of you.

_("I ain't what you think I am," was far too late in coming. Should have told her long before but he was a coward. Or a fool, somehow figuring that if Hannah believed in him hard enough, he could be what she thought he was. What she wanted him to be. "I ain't all that good."_

_For once Hannah didn't look up at him with all the expectation in the world in her eyes, like he was about to come out with something brilliant or interesting. This time, she laughed._

" _Luke," she answered back, "I know you ain't perfect. You're grumpy on a good day and downright surly on a bad one. Sometimes I think you look at all people like they're livestock. If they behave themselves and do what you want, you're content. If not, you give them commands that they can't possibly understand." Well, it sure was nice to have his faults explained to him in that sort of detail. Not that there was any news there, just her way of putting it. Different from being called a buzz saw. "What kind of a person would I be if I couldn't see that? I'd have to be blind and deaf as well."_

_He had the oddest urge to defend himself. To explain that he had every good reason to be less than happy, but he couldn't. He didn't have a handy excuse. Only her warm palm in his, the freshness of the forest air and the nagging urge to tell her that she had no idea what she was talking about._

_And that wasn't what this was about, anyway._

_At least he didn't think so. It would help, if he was going to measure progress toward accomplishing his goal, to know what the goal was in the first place._

_They'd been engaged for months now. Jesse kept saying he needed to set a date, but Hannah seemed perfectly content to wait. She hadn't bugged him about an actual wedding, anyway, though she still made a point of holding her left hand awkwardly visibly, so no one could miss the ring. His mother's ring, Hannah's ring. A Duke ring and the only way to keep giving it meaning was to give it away, to let it keep getting given away from generation to generation, until some far future descendant, maybe with Hannah's eyes and Bo's face and hair (because that would make it a pretty Duke) wore it. There was no accounting for how he wanted the stupid thing back, to hide it in the closet again and forget that any of this had ever happened._

_He was a damned idiot._

_He had no good reasons to ask for the ring back. She was good for him, everyone he came across in town or church told him so. And he could be good to her. But he couldn't shake the notion that she didn't really know him at all. That what she was dating and planning to marry and spend the rest of her life with was nothing more than a cartoon, paper-thin and drawn completely out of proportion to boot._

_She thought he was some sort of a hero, he knew he was nothing more than a man going through the motions. He'd marry her anyway, he just figured she ought to know what she was getting into. And he wanted to make her stop looking at him like he was so all-fired special. He was just about drowning in her admiration of all the things he really wasn't and never had been._

" _There's a lot of other guys out there," he explained, "that could give you more."_

" _Maybe," she agreed. Stopped walking on the old trail at the foot of Hampton's hill that she wouldn't know was anything other than a walking trail. It led up to still site four, but there wasn't but one other soul left in Hazzard that could call it that. To everyone else it was just a clearing near a stream. She dropped the hand that she'd been holding and stepped up in front of him. Looked him right in the eyes, which didn't feel all that good. Somewhere, he figured, deep inside him, he still had a soul. A spark of life, but that wasn't hers. It was a relic of the past and it belonged to him and Bo. In the absence of Bo it was his alone and he wanted to keep it that way. He looked through her so she wouldn't have a chance of seeing it. "But I don't want more. I want you."_

_The woman was a blamed fool, but if she wanted to love him, he couldn't stop her.)_

The exit is one of those tight curves with a steep bank angling up to a mean-looking metal guardrail that's been hit by more than one car. Luke slows considerably to make it safely in the top-heavy pickup, figures that Bo took it at full speed and let the grade of it hold him to the road. Race driver from the first time he got behind the wheel, and how can his cousin give it up right when he's about to get his best chance yet at winning the Winston Cup?

When the dizzy ramp ends there's just a thin country road with only one structure in sight. A tiny spot on the outskirts of some town that's got a few people doing whatever it takes to survive. He can admit he likes the feel of this place so much better than he likes a city, even a small one like Mooresville. But he can't shake the notion that Bo is throwing away a chance at something worth having, just to come back to whatever he fantasizes home to be like. Surely he's forgotten the monotony of it, the way each week starts the same as the last, plods forward only to stumble into the next week without ever getting around to changing in any way.

He can see the gleam of orange next to the cinderblock building, with the big white letters on its angled roof blaring out for all to see that it's a Red Rooster Rest. Gas in the front, greasy spoon inside and takeout at the back. Smaller than the Boar's Nest but it kind of feels like home all the same. Bo, leaning his backside on the driver's side door, stuffing something wrapped in white paper into his mouth, dragging his sleeve across his lips and waving. Grinning because he's finally caught up and for a moment – and only that long – Luke reckons that whatever happens in Hazzard when they tell Jesse and whatever choice Bo makes afterward, everything will be all right as long as he and Bo are together.

* * *

The edge of the bed mocks him, so close and flimsy, just begging for Bo to shift a little so it can dump him off the side. He feels twice as wide as his usual self and it's not just because the mattress underneath him is half as big as he's used to and twice as floppy, too. His belly's stuffed with chili and Luke's taking up more than his half of the bed.

It's a risk, maybe a stupid one. Maybe they've taken so many stupid risks already that he figures one more can't hurt, and maybe he's an idiot. An uncomfortable idiot, but he figures he's a happy idiot. Or at least not a terribly unhappy one.

They have to tell Jesse. They do and there's no way around it. But there Luke was anyway at dinner, answering his unspoken questions with silent responses, cocked eyebrows and lowered chins, single-shoulder shrugs then tiniest of headshakes when Jesse wasn't looking. (Oh, but Daisy was and she knows what's coming, he figures. Otherwise she wouldn't have been chirping nonstop about useless nothings throughout the course of the meal. Even if Luke had nodded at him that it was time to do the telling, neither one of them would have been able to get a word in around all of Daisy's silly girl-chatter.) Later, after they sat around for a while digesting and watching the fireplace glow, Daisy sitting on the edge of the chair like she might need to make a quick escape, they'd come to bed. Luke walking into the room of their childhood like he'd never left it, like he hadn't built a new one down the hall and lived in it ever since. Bo had followed him in and closed the door, which no one had questioned. A while later, Jesse had shuffled down the hall to his own room.

They'd been good, getting into their separate beds early, with the thought of chores in the morning, but they'd whispered a bunch first. About telling, and when. They settled on after breakfast because they could get Jesse alone then, separate from Daisy. If they did it right, they might not ever have to mention that Daisy had any part in this at all, and even if they did it wrong at least they'd have time to plead her case for her before Jesse saw her again.

So that took care of the when, the why had been settled long ago (because Luke said they had to), but it left the how up to the imagination. Which was why he crawled into the bed with Luke. Too many unknowns, too much to think about. He just wanted a few hours to hold onto Luke, to be held and to create a memory of this moment when he was loved by both of the most important men in his life.

Come morning, things will not be the same, and Jesse will love him in that same way that any wayward child is loved, with a cutting edge of shame, sadness and disappointment.

Luke's pretending to sleep, even if they both know he's far too still. The arm wrapped around Bo is like a stock car restraint, tight and protective with no give in it anywhere. But he's not going to complain, it's keeping him safely on the bed and he's happy just to be held close.

His cousin's mulling over what to say to Jesse in the morning, and Bo can leave him to that. It's a dumb thing to do, to worry over what's going to happen like Luke does. The morning's going to be unpleasant, he can admit that. He just can't figure why a person like Luke would deliberately go out of their way to make that unpleasantness start as early as possible. It's like doing extra laps before a race – not going to help anything. The only thing that counts is what you do after the flag goes down.

But there's more on Luke's mind than that, he knows. That same confused and slightly upset look he's worn since Friday night, when Bo announced that he wants to come home. The worries over whether it's the right decision, why it's being made and what Bo is giving up for him. About sacrifices and who should make them (and Saint Luke rolls off the tongue so much more naturally than Saint Bo – he's pretty sure that no one named Beauregard ever became a saint) and when and why.

But coming home isn't anything like a sacrifice. It's—

NASCAR managed to fill his days. Maybe it gave him something to want in that vague way, like wanting a million dollars. Something that would be real nice to have, maybe, but in the end wouldn't do him any good.

_(It was kind of like watching a color movie on a black and white television. You knew there was more there than you could see, but you didn't really care. The story still worked okay, you could hear all the words and you didn't have to see the actual color to know that the sky was blue and the grass was green._

_But there was still something missing and no amount of telling yourself not to worry about it could turn shades of gray into color._

_He didn't know when it happened, or maybe it wasn't all at once. Maybe it was like sand through his fingers or rain out of the sky. Eventually the supply ran out, there was nothing left to hold onto or let fall to the ground and then it was done. All he could say for sure was that one day he looked up and realized that he was seeing his life at NASCAR on a black and white television. The color was still there, undoubtedly. People like Don and Lem and Itchy and Butch still saw it, lived in it. They probably still saw the pink neon in the pub's window, the amber of a beer just poured. The blue in denim and the yellow of a dress, but it was all gone for Bo. Even the girls he brought home a few nights a week were in black and white, though he could still tell whether they had dark hair, how much it curled and whether they wore it collar-length._

_Maybe, if he was willing to invest himself, he could get the color back. Maybe if he really tried._

_Daisy visited sometimes. More now than she had when she first moved up to Clemmons. Said she liked Mooresville because it felt more like home than where she lived and Bo might have wanted to argue with her that it was all black and white to Hazzard's greens and browns and blues, but he didn't. Figured it wouldn't make any sense to her anyway._

_Mostly it was okay, though. As long as he didn't expect the world to be in color, he could adjust to it. He could let day turn into night followed by another day, distinguishable only by the slight change in the sky's shades of gray. As long as time moved forward, as long as he had routines and activities to fill it and there was some vague sense of it all leading somewhere, he could handle it._

_Mostly. Sometimes he just plain didn't want to pull the pillow off his face or get up in the morning because there were no chickens clucking, no sausages heating in the kitchen and no cousin threatening to roll him right out of bed onto the floor unless he got himself moving, right now.)_

A kiss to his forehead that pretends to be sleepy. "Go to sleep, Bo," the command that actually does slur around the edges and maybe Luke's ready to get some rest himself, or maybe he's just trying to set a good example.

Even in the dark of their room, he knows there's color. Luke's eyes are closed, but they are the bluest things Bo has ever seen, and ever since he brought a freshly abandoned Daisy back home back in July, those eyes have haunted him. He has remembered, even as he went through his black and white motions, that the world is made up of amazing colors.

Now that he's got Luke back – really got him, because Luke not only came to him, but has made every effort to stay with him, even getting a lowly job for which he is vastly overqualified – Bo wants to live in the world of color, rather than having Luke join him in his sad little black and white life.

It's nothing Luke would understand, he doesn't figure. For Luke the world has always been black and white, maybe just dirty gray. So he doesn't bother to explain it, just kisses Luke right back and enjoys this moment of holding onto him because soon enough he's going to have to go back to his own bed, and after that it will be the morning that he and Luke break their Uncle Jesse's heart.


	23. Chapter 23

"Come on, Bo." It's admitting, maybe, that they've been wasting time pretending to sleep when they both know that they aren't. The bed's too small for them and even if they weren't being kept awake by their thoughts, one of them would have to stay up to make sure that neither of them rolled over and fell off. Nothing would bring their kin running faster than the sound of one of them thudding to the floor. Jesse would show up at the door with shotgun in hand out of old habit of fending off nocturnal varmints like the law, and really, there are better ways to spend this night than getting shot.

"Come on?" comes the echo in the dark room. Black as any night they've ever gone out delivering, but he doesn't need to be able to see to know what Bo's face looks like. Slack-jawed, waiting for his brain to catch up to the motion of Luke's arm as it pushes the blankets down. Fresh air feels good, at least at first. Too hot with two of them under the blanket, no matter how old and thin it has gotten. Sweat cooling on his skin and by now Bo's eyebrow has probably come up, attempt at looking serious that always fails. "Come on what?"

"More like where," Luke informs him, legs over the side of the bed and standing, offering his hand back down to Bo. Too dark, either he misses or Bo does, winds up swatting him in the face. Forehead or cheekbone against his knuckles, no real force behind it but Bo's face is hard and Luke's hands are big and somewhere between them there's all manner of opportunity for someone to get hurt. "You all right?" he whispers.

"Ow," Bo says, but he stands anyway, starts to snicker. Then it's a giggle and Luke wraps an arm low around his waist, pats him in some sort of acknowledgement of his good humor about getting punched in the face at two in the morning. He steps away, nearly trips on Bo's duffle bag tossed haphazardly into the middle of the floor. Reaches down to disentangle it from his foot and pick through it to get what he wants before kicking it over toward Bo's bed. Finds his way to the closet by a lifetime of navigating this space. Maybe the floorboards are even worn into the pattern of his and Bo's feet by now. Folds the sliding door slowly back; draws out the usual creak it makes into a low moan that makes Bo giggle all over again. Luke grabs a blanket off the top shelf, thin and a little bit stiff from age, the sort of thing no one will ever miss. Tosses it at Bo, whose eyes may or may not have adjusted well enough to see it coming, hears the soft whoosh of it landing somewhere, could be anywhere, except Bo's giggle gets both louder and more muffled. Some portion of the blanket is over Bo's mouth, whether it landed that way or Bo is holding it over his lips to stifle the giggles. Luke pats around until he finds a quilt, probably that one he had as a kid that lost half it's stuffing over the years. It's enough, he figures. The night is overcast and not as cold as the depth of January was.

Bo's giggles are getting dangerous over there, growing on themselves and threatening to spill over beyond what the blanket can contain. By the time Luke makes his way to the window and shoves it up and open, it's more of a rolling sort of laughter coming from Bo, not as high pitched but twice as noisy. Luke turns back, reaches out to find some part of Bo – hard, probably shoulder – and pulls him forward. Stumble-step or two and he catches what he figures is an elbow and pulls Bo to him. Kisses him hard enough to shut him up. Chilly air snaking around through the open window, setting up chains of goose bumps on his bare back, hardly bothering to pause at the cotton of his pajama pants before making itself perfectly at home.

Giggles still bubbling up through Bo's mouth, so Luke presses their lips together a little more firmly. Warm there, while everything else is getting cold.

"Stop," he hisses because he can't kiss the man into seriousness. "Wrap that around you," he says about the blanket that Bo's got bunched and draped over his otherwise bare shoulder, and then goes about figuring how to stuff himself and his quilt out through the window. Last time he did this with any care he was a teenager with his skin a lot closer to his bones and less likely to get a patch of it scraped off by the wood frame or metal track of the window. And the last time he did it without care was more of a dive; he hasn't got Rosco P. Coltrane and his blaring bullhorn to motivate him into going that route tonight.

The ground is further down than he remembers, making his effort to free himself more of a hop than he planned on, but he's safely out. Bo's trip is slower and more awkward; broad chest, wide shoulders. Longer legs, at least – his bare feet find the winter-dead grass better than Luke's did. The window shudders as he tries to close it from the outside. He only gets it so far down before he decides that a little cold air filtering into their room isn't going to hurt them, especially since they won't be spending the rest of the night in there anyway.

The air is colder on the outside, shifting with the breezes, but really, once he pulls the quilt tighter around his shoulders, it's not so bad. Running helps, too. It's plenty dark, even out here where the moon's ducking behind clouds. They're moonshine brewers and runners, though, and their Uncle Jesse would threaten to turn them over to the law if they couldn't navigate in a full blackout. (What they are navigating toward, he figures, is going to make the old man consider turning them over his knee.) Besides, the barn isn't that far away.

The chickens cluck their disapproval of being invaded like this when Luke finds the lantern and the matches to light it just inside the barn door. The goats shift, but probably never even wake up, and Maudine eyeballs them like she plans to tattle on them in the morning. Which will be too late, by then they will have tattled on themselves and for all those times that Luke insisted that it was only the right thing to do, a tight little clench in his stomach asks him if it really is a good idea.

"Luke?" Bo asks, pulling the blanket tighter around his shoulders. Even though the air is slightly warmer in here than outside, it's still winter and his bed was that much more of a warm and safe place to be.

Luke points up at the loft; it's not such a novel idea. They've slept up there any number of times since they were kids, with less provocation and protection than they've got tonight. He climbs, feels the ladder shake – Bo's right on his heels. A lifetime of rules about that, waiting for the first person to make it to the top before the second is allowed to start so no one gets hurt, and Bo's decided to ignore them. Which is the least of the rules that they're breaking tonight, but he's carrying a lantern and a quilt and he'd just as soon Bo wasn't so eager to follow him. (Then again, what kind of life would he have had without Bo being willing to follow immediately after him to all the stupid places he's led?)

The lantern gets hung on the rusted metal hook on the center post, and with a good bit of coaxing, Bo gives up his blanket to spread on the loose straw that covers the floor at the end nearest the loft doors. Luke rolls out the quilt and the hand cream he swiped from Bo's duffle hits the hay; it's only then that Bo smiles again for him. Apparently he's a genius. (But then he always has been.)

The two of them crawl onto the blanket and pull the quilt over them. Now, finally, they have enough room to lie comfortably side by side, but somehow he ends up on top of Bo instead. Crazy kisses and giggles, hands everywhere and paltry clothes lost. Too cold to be doing this, but between the blankets they've stolen from their own closet and the way they're rubbing together everywhere from their noses to their ankles, it's warm enough right here.

Tomorrow's going to arrive far too soon, and it's going to be about as unpleasant as any day they've ever been through. But when Luke spreads the hand cream on himself then presses in, he can forget where he is and why and what's coming in the morning. This first, and the rest can just wait its dang turn.

* * *

Somewhere in the deepest hours of the morning, when all the world, even a pair of former moonshiners (and the revenuers that once chased them) ought to be asleep, Luke must have slipped back down the ladder, across the dew-wet grass and into their house because Bo wakes up smelling straw and manure, but with a pair of jeans, a decent shirt and his old brown jacket laying on a hay bale within easy reach. Luke's on the other side, arm protectively around his waist and face buried in the back of his neck, offering up the warm breath of sleep. Seems like a restless night has finally ended in some amount of rest for Luke.

He hates to wake him up, but the lantern has long since gone out (or maybe Luke extinguished it) which means that any seeing he's doing is the result of the sky brightening enough to filter through the cracks in the loft doors. And there are better ways to tell Jesse than letting him find them cuddling up together in the hayloft.

"Luke," he whispers back over his own shoulder. It ought to be enough, his cousin's not known for sleeping through much. But there's no acknowledgement, no movement, just the dead weight of that arm thrown across him. "Luke," he tries again, tries to push himself up but he's got a sleeping arm so he mostly just ends up exactly where he was. "Hey," he says, starting to elbow at ribs. Stops, because it would make perfect sense to wake his cousin, just as Luke did to him throughout their childhood, with roughness. But Luke's not just his cousin now, he's more a lover and it just isn't nice to poke at a sleeping lover like that.

"Luke," comes out different, kind of a grunt as he's rolling from his side to his back. "Come on now," he shoves himself over further, trying to face Luke now. It isn't easy, especially with that tingling arm that doesn't quite want to go where Bo tells it to. Tries to whap Luke in the face, but he gets it under control and drops it onto Luke's shoulder. "Time to wake up." A little kiss that is not returned. "Luke?"

The arm around him tightens. "Shh," Luke advises him.

"Wake up," he repeats, finds the hold getting still tighter. "Luke," and it's downright constrictive. "Come on, wake up."

"Ain't sleeping," gets explained to him. Seems a mite suspicious when the man was out so cold that he missed all of Bo's flailing efforts to get himself turned over.

"Yes, you were."

"Nope." But his eyes still haven't opened and his arm is still plenty tight around Bo's waist. Holding him still like maybe he'll go back to sleep if only he's pinned down long enough. (And he might just, but that would be just about the worst idea he's had in a dozen years or so.)

"Sun's trying to come up," he points out.

"No it ain't," Luke tells him. Ignores the kiss that Bo plants on his nose.

"Is so. Heck, if it ain't," because Luke still hasn't opened his eyes, and unless he gets around to doing that really soon, they're going to have some serious problems navigating back across their own lawn, much less sneaking into their window. "Then what's all that bright stuff out there?"

"Supernova."

What?

"You want to explain that?" he asks with a disbelieving laugh. Kisses Luke's left eyelid and has designs on the right.

"Science," Luke offers up as an excuse.

Bo never has cared a whole lot for astronomy, didn't do too well at it in school. Still, he's pretty sure there's no supernova happening outside of their barn. (But if there were, it might be a convenient way to avoid the rest of the morning. Bo's breath catches in his throat at that thought, and maybe Luke's onto something. Maybe, if they never open their eyes, they'll never have to face it.)

"Well, if that supernova gets any brighter, Uncle Jesse's gonna get up and start banging on our bedroom door." And not find them there, which will put him into a foul mood even before he gets around to hearing what they've got to say.

Luke's eyes open and there will be no more kissing, eyelids or otherwise, because suddenly it really is time to get up and get moving.

"Get dressed," Luke says, unwrapping that one arm from him and giving him a shove. Makes him look back fondly on the notion of elbowing Luke in the ribs.

Except they really don't have time. The plan never does get explained to him, but he's got a lifetime of following Luke's lead, so when his cousin gets dressed and their pajamas get rolled up into the blanket and quilt and thrown into one of the recesses of the dormers up here, and then Luke crawls down the ladder to do chores, Bo just follows along. Improvises as necessary, pulling his tee-shirt hem up to carry the eggs in, because the real basket's back in the kitchen. Luke's got the goats' milk in their fire bucket instead of the usual milking bucket, but otherwise everything probably appears pretty normal when they cross paths with Jesse in the farmyard. The old man's coming out as they're going in, already looking cross.

"Thought we'd get an early start on the chores," Luke explains. "They're done." Which means their uncle doesn't really need to head out to the barn. He looks at them suspiciously, but waves them inside anyway.

"I'm gonna check on Maudine," he explains.

Bo knows that mules can't talk and yet still has a nervous feeling in his gut that Maudine is going to rat them out. And maybe she will. She and Jesse have an understanding that goes beyond words.

"Come on," Luke says to him when he lingers behind to watch his uncle walk through the barn doors. "You need a shower."

Yeah, he does, and Luke does, too. Ought to be clean and presentable for breakfast, and right now neither of them are. In fact, Luke's got a long, suspicious-looking straw hanging out of his hair in the back, and Bo doesn't have a free hand to pull it out. They don't usually take showers before breakfast, but today he reckons they'd better unless they want Jesse to know, far too soon, what they've been up to. (Any time might be far too soon as far as Bo' concerned.)

Daisy knows. It's there on her flat-lipped, squint-eyed, disapproving little face the minute he follows Luke into the kitchen. Maybe it's the eggs cradled in his tee shirt that do it, or the fire bucket or Luke's bedroom hair (or his, because Lord knows he's got more of it to get tangled than his cousin does).

"Give me those," she snaps at Bo, grabbing for the eggs so quickly that she almost crushes them into his belly (which would make the shower he's about to take be less suspicious, really) and plucking them away from him two at a time as though he might just contaminate them if he's close to them for too long.

Luke carries the bucket of milk over to the counter and sets it down. Stands there and watches the way Daisy comes at him with the sort of violence that's bound to end up with someone bleeding or crying or both. Has the gall to snicker at him, then go about getting the funnel out from the cabinet under the sink, a bottle from the cupboard and begin to transfer the milk out of the bucket.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," is all he has to say, and then only when Daisy almost bumps him in the process of moving eggs from his shirt to the edge of her stove.

Which only makes Daisy's hair fly that much more, her eyes glitter like a snake and any minute now she's going to bear her fangs. At least there are no eggs between them anymore.

"Bo," Luke says in that ridiculously calm and steady voice of his. Trained into him by the military, no doubt. _There are enemy troops to the front and rear, and alligator-infested swamps on either side, men. Every direction is a suicide mission, but forward march!_ "Go on and get into the shower. Go on," a little more insistently the second time when he doesn't move. Can't, Daisy's got him in a death-match of staring. Whoever looks away first is likely to get mauled by the other, but he looks away anyway. If he's going to get cleaned up and leave any time at all for Luke to do the same before Jesse gets back, he'd better get moving. He heads off to the bedroom to get fresh socks. For all of Luke's apparently careful middle-of-the night planning, he forgot to bring those. And Bo's boots, unlike Luke's, are comparatively new and far too stiff to be pleasant, rubbing up against the sensitive skin of the naked feet contained in them.

"Daisy," he hears Luke saying as he's walking down the hall. "You reckon you could cook up some hash browns?" Uncle Jesse's favorite. Which isn't going to do them a whole lot of good. Once the food is eaten, whether it's ambrosia or slop, bad things are still going to happen and Uncle Jesse is still going to tan their hides until there's no flesh left and all that's left to whip is their bones. (But, for a few cruel moments before that happens, the old man will be happy, satisfied. At peace with potatoes in his belly and a day's plans with his nephews on his mind.)

"Luke," Daisy complains back at him. Doesn't he know that hash browns take some time to cook? And that she has her own plans for breakfast? Is he really that dumb that he's willing to upset her this early in the morning? (No, not dumb. Clever as a fox. He means to make Daisy kill him now, and leave Bo to face Jesse alone.) Bo digs quietly through his duffle bag to find what he needs.

"And then," Luke says from back there in the kitchen. Bo's all but tiptoeing his way down to the bathroom now. "I reckon it would be best if you disappeared for a while after breakfast. Go out with Sally Jo and spend the day shopping or something."

"Luke," Daisy says again, and it's not so accusing this time. More like horrified. Bo can relate.

"Maybe you'll want to go to Atlanta," Luke suggests. "And spend the night."

Bo closes the bathroom door because he doesn't want to know. Is Luke serious about that last part, is he teasing Daisy or a little of both? It doesn't matter, really, because he's getting the girl out of the line of fire and that means he thinks it's going to be bad enough that he needs to protect her.

Oh, God, they're really going to do this. He turns on the shower and steps under the spray without remembering to take off his clothes or wait for the water to warm up.

* * *

Bo's ten yard flash from bathroom to bedroom goes to prove how quickly a good plan can unravel. One simple task – _take a shower, Bo_ – already fumbled and there are so many more to get through today. _Sit still, Bo. Don't fidget. Meet your uncle's eyes and don't act ashamed._ It is, he figures, too hard a task. Impossible, really, when Bo's clothes hang from the shower rod, dripping into puddles on the floor. Luke doesn't know exactly how they got that way, but it doesn't matter. Any man that's grown up enough to declare that it's his choice who he loves ought to be able to take a shower without supervision.

He turns around to look at Daisy, some intent to beg her not to tell on the tip of his tongue (and they've asked too much of her in that way already, but then again, what's one more little sin to pile on top of all the bigger ones?) but her eyes are popping and she's giggling into her hand at the sight of their overgrown cousin running through the house naked. She waves him off and turns back for the kitchen and those hash browns that she's cooking up under protest, with a side order of genuine fear.

Leaving Daisy and Bo to face Jesse alone, even if all they're supposed to do is act natural, seems like the worst idea he could possibly have come up with, so he takes what has to be the fastest shower he's managed since the one-minute grooming limitations from his days in the Marines. (Of course, he had no hair back then to worry about. Now he just ignores that part of himself and cleans only the things that he and Bo made most dirty. Ducks his head under the cooling water and sees a length of straw float down toward the drain and figures it's good, at least, that he got that out.) He knocks Bo's jeans to the floor in his effort to get out and they land in their own puddle. This room's got to get cleaned up and he really can't prevail upon Daisy to do it.

He dresses without drying first, which makes his jeans far too difficult to pull on – Marine uniforms were never this tight or stiff. The towel that should have dried his skin goes to wiping the floor and then gets tossed, along with all of Bo's wet clothes, into the hamper in the corner of the bathroom. Daisy doesn't like them to do that; clothes should be dried first so they don't get to smelling or something, but he figures this counts as an emergency situation and he can do something nice for her later to make up for it. When it comes down to it, it's just one more nice thing amongst a year's worth that he owes her by now. Finally, he pulls his socks on, steps directly into a puddle he didn't realize was there and figures he's going to have to deal with wet feet. He can hear Jesse's voice in the kitchen, and the tone of it doesn't exactly sound peaceful.

He stumbles over the edge of the living room rug in his hurry to make it to the kitchen, where it turns out that Jesse's just grumbling at the coffee pot for whatever offenses it's committed this morning. The oldster looks up from his scolding to see Luke regaining his balance with a hand against the archway and manages to keep his reaction down to a raised eyebrow and a smirk. Daisy's resolutely facing her frying pan like there isn't a cranky old man and a clumsy cousin sharing space with her.

"Boy," Jesse advises, and he's more than mildly amused. If it weren't for that dang coffee pot (and the rheumatism that's always at its worst before breakfast) he'd be laughing outright. "Best you go get some boots on. And get your dang-fool cousin in here, too, lest breakfast passes him by and he don't get none."

Well. That would be a tragedy.

At least most days.

Today, after he drags himself into the kitchen and ducks his head far too low for grace, Bo picks at his fried eggs like he expects to find a bomb hidden under their irregular edges, and the hash browns sit lonely and unloved on the rim of his plate while the sausage congeals in its own little grease puddle next to the pancakes. Meanwhile, Daisy's going after her food like it's got legs and might just run right off her plate unless she keeps stabbing it with her fork and shoving it into her mouth. Luke tries to eat at a reasonably normal pace, just to strike a balance, and Jesse somehow manages not to notice a thing. Got to be those hash browns.

There's movement at the edge of his vision (and just maybe he has taken to paying a bit too much attention to his plate rather than what's going on around him) and he looks up to see Daisy taking away Bo's plate like it's the end of the meal when it's hardly more than the beginning. Bo isn't fighting her for the food which ought to be suspicious enough to get even Rosco Coltrane's attention, not to mention Jesse's. Not even grabbing for his glass of milk, which is completely full and likely to be splashed all around the kitchen from the near-violent way it's being yanked out from in front of him.

"Daisy," he says, and he knows it's pushing his luck. Jesse hasn't noticed anything so far and maybe it's best not to draw his attention toward the strange behavior in front of him. Then again, it's going to be hard for the old man to miss when his half-finished plate gets snatched out from in front of him. "Me and Bo will get the dishes."

That, of course, gets one white eyebrow lifted, blue eye underneath flicking from one nervous fool to the next. The three of them might as well be five years old for all that they are unable to keep from flinching.

"Luke," Bo complains, because his services in the kitchen have been offered up without prior consultation. This, of all the things that they are facing, is a problem.

"Eat your breakfast," Luke counsels, though he's not sure it's a good idea. Could be that all the breakfast Luke ate is ready to make a reappearance here pretty soon. Besides, Bo's breakfast is still sort of hanging in the air, held up by Daisy's practiced hand. "You know Daisy's got that thing she was wanting to do this morning," as an excuse for any part of the last few seconds that Jesse's willing to fall for. "So we'll do the dishes for her."

"Thing?" Bo says, like an idiot. Like he's bound and determined to make sure that Jesse demands to get to the bottom of whatever's going on here, when really, no sane man would want Jesse anywhere near the bottom of what's coming.

The old man thinks Bo's brilliant, though. "Thing?" he repeats because it's just the most important question anyone's ever asked and it demands an answer right now.

* * *

Luke's looking at him. Daisy is – somewhere, right there and might even still be holding onto his glass of milk. Which he really ought to drink, maybe. His mouth is about as dry as mouthful of hay but he isn't exactly thirsty and milk doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would glide easily down his throat right now. Not like water. (Or moonshine. Gallons and gallons of moonshine would probably be the best thing for him. Might just kill him but if it didn't it would leave him too drunk to care that Jesse was flaying the hide off his hind end.) Jesse's eyes have moved off of him and onto Daisy. It's a temporary situation; he knows that. The old man hasn't held his eyes on any one of them for more than a few seconds at a time, and he'll get back to looking at Bo in just a minute here. Then it will be both Jesse and Luke looking at him and there'll be nothing he can do other than crack under that kind of pressure. He'll be confessing to things he's never even done, things that will make his relationship with Luke sound tame in comparison. (In theory, anyway. At the moment he can't think of anything particularly scandalous to confess to, but then again, he can't hardly think of anything at all.)

"Thing?" Daisy says and it's like she's coming out of some sort of a trance. Bo can relate to that, he might have just been in one himself. Not the good kind, where everything goes a nice shade of fuzzy and it's almost like being asleep, but a much worse kind. With the same miserable and half-worried thoughts doing endless laps in his head like a race that could never be won. "Oh, right the thing."

"Going shopping," Luke says and it's just about the worst plan his cousin has ever had. Because—

"Doing the inventory at work," Daisy says at the same time, just enough off Luke's rhythm that both sets of conflicting words are plenty clear.

His cousins look at each other, but there's no getting on the same page when one of them is Daisy and the other is Luke. Oh, the two of them have spent a lifetime together, but they can't read each other's minds. Not like he and Luke can.

"Going shopping after I do the inventory at work," Daisy amends, and she's a fool. All three of them are. They can't lie, which means that Daisy's got to go to work and count at least a few glasses, and then she's going to have to go out shopping. But first, she's going to have to withstand Jesse, because what had been a curious stare is now a lot closer to dangerous.

"Sit down." The tone doesn't brook any manner of sassing or disobeying, though Daisy does give the door a fond look. Like if only she'd been a little faster she might have made it out there, but it's too late now. Skinny fingers all but drop his glass of milk in front of him, letting a good portion slop over the side and onto the table. The kind of wastefulness that would get her fretting and Jesse tutting if they didn't have bigger thoughts on their minds. As it is, neither of them even notices, and Bo just shifts his chair a bit so that if it runs off the edge of the table it'll go straight down to the floor without soaking into the knee of his jeans along the way. His plate gets set down in front of Daisy and it is something of a shame, really. He probably should have eaten what is undoubtedly the last meal he'll ever be offered in this house. "Now, one of you," Jesse's eyes slide around the table to freeze each of them in a stare, ending with Luke. "And I don't care which one," which really means Luke. "Needs to tell me what the three of you is up to."

"Uncle Jesse," Luke starts and it's in all the wrong tone. Almost dismissive. "Ain't no call for Daisy to—"

"I'll decide," Jesse interrupts, wide finger pointing at Luke's chest, dangerous as the old shotgun over the doorframe, and Bo figures that the three of them might as well drop their jeans now and let Uncle Jesse have after their backsides. "What call there is for Daisy to do what. You just start telling me why she even _considered_ lying to me."

Instinct makes him want to defend Daisy, to say that there was no lie involved and that she's really got nothing to do with this (give or take the fact that she did sort of have her part in the way he and Luke finally worked out getting together, a fact that they should all keep from Uncle Jesse until the day they die) but he gets that look from Luke. The one he's seen hundreds of times over the course of his life, the one that says _shut up and let me do all the talking_. Which he's perfectly willing to do, given how he has no clear idea what to say.

"Uncle Jesse," and neither does Luke, if the pause between those words and the next ones is any indication. Luke's mouth working, but no words coming out and Bo can't watch it anymore. His eyes drop down to the table and look at that, his hands are there. With all their lines and creases, the fine near-white hairs just below his knuckles, he could study them all day and never lose interest.

"Must be bad," their uncle observes. "If you ain't even willing to tell me the truth, and I thought I taught you better than that. Now, Bo," oh, he really ought to pull his gaze up now, to meet his uncle's eyes and somehow manage not to look scared about doing it, either. But his plate's over there in front of Daisy, the fried egg with its yellow, runny eye staring at him and making him halfway sick even if he never did eat it. "I know you been gone to NASCAR for over three years now, but I figured it was safe to let you go. Figured I'd taught you right about telling the truth and being responsible. There ain't nothing you can tell me that'll make me stop loving you. And I hope that being away at NASCAR ain't changed you enough that you don't still know that. What you got to tell me might make me mad, but then again, it might not. And not telling me at all is sure to make me mad so I figure that you all have got something to say." Then again, maybe this is a good thing. Here they are, already at the lecture and they haven't even confessed yet. As long as everything can proceed forward from here, there may be no need to actually get around to saying those things that they've come here to say. (Fat chance. Luke will never be at peace in this relationship until Jesse knows that it exists.)

"And Luke, you was only in Mooresville here and there and I know you know how to tell the truth. Heck, you spent your whole life telling one miserable version or the other, even when it wasn't asked of you. I reckon you're too honest, if anything." Luke winces at that one. Bo's not looking at him, but he knows that's what he's got to be doing because it's exactly what Bo would do under the circumstances. "Now Daisy—"

That does it, Luke's not willing to let Jesse dig into their female cousin when none of this is her fault.

"Me and Bo's together." Though there might have been better ways to prevent Daisy getting skewered than to go blurting out words like that without any warning.

Jesse just stares. Tilts his head to the side like a curious dog, like looking at things slanted might help. "Together." But there's no question in his voice, just darkness. "Together like—"

"Like I was together with Hannah." Oh, that was the wrong thing to say. Bo doesn't properly know Hannah and never much cared for her but he's smart enough to realize that invoking her name now isn't going to do anything to soften the old man's heart. Jesse loves the girl, or at least the idea of her, and doesn't want to hear her name mentioned at any point in a discussion about his nephews being together.

"Not," Jesse yells, sudden and angry. Enough to make a sane man jump, so Bo does that. Snaps his head around to watch the old man because he reckons he could do with a little warning about what's about to happen. It doesn't make a whipping any less painful to know that it's coming, but it does make it less of a surprise. "Like Hannah. You was engaged to Hannah. You was gonna stand up in a church and tell the preacher and God that you took her for better and for worse until death do you part." And that, right there, is why Luke never could marry the girl. Jesse ought to know it, too. There's never been anyone else in Luke's life that can stick with him for both better and worse, until death. That's always been Bo's job. "I don't see no ring on Bo's finger."

If he'd known Luke was suicidal, he would have talked him out of this. Would have kept him up in the loft (or maybe in their old bedroom, maybe he would never have crawled into Luke's bed with him in the first place) and far away from Jesse. But now it's too late and Luke's holding up his right hand and tugging the ring he's been wearing on his pinky for the past couple of months.

Jesse reaches out and slaps Luke's hand before he can turn around to give the ring to Bo or put it on his finger or whatever ridiculous gesture he has in mind. Metal clatters against wood before dropping down to roll across linoleum. Makes a slow, mesmerizing loop around the floor, tracking toward the space under the stove, but Daisy's spiky little shoe stomps on it before it can make it that far.

Luke's mother's ring, one of the few objects that survived the accident that killed Luke's parents and his. Crash, fire, explosion and there wasn't a whole lot left to identify one person from another in the ashy mess that got left at the end, but there was Luke's mother's ring and someone's knife. Bo figured it would only be fair if it was his father's but Jesse said he couldn't tell and it wasn't a good keepsake anyway. It's been hidden somewhere in their uncle's closet since the mid nineteen sixties.

Right about now, Bo figures it's a good thing Jesse's not in possession of that knife or anything more deadly than a teaspoon, considering the way he's looking at Luke.

"How long," Jesse asks, and Bo is not meant to get involved here. This is one of those grand clashes, left over from Luke's teenaged years, when everything was between Jesse and Luke and the fights could be mean or ugly, but it didn't matter, because Bo didn't exist in those moments. It was like he suddenly became invisible and mute, and there was nothing he could do to stop Luke and Jesse from going at each other. "Has this been going on?"

Luke always came out at the losing end of those battles. Red hind end and sleeping on his belly for days, but he never cried and his head never dropped from its haughty, arrogant tilt. Jesse, for all that he had the upper hand and the whip as well, somehow always managed to look worse, with his red eyes and nose, hair sticking up at odd angles, his face sweaty and sickly pale. Bo hated those fighting days more than the ones where they harvested corn in the cold rain or ate only a measured amount of beans so they could save the rest for tomorrow.

"A couple months," he answers, even if he is invisible. Gets a dirty look from Luke, whose words _a few years_ overlap with his. Unruly younger cousins keep mouthing off when Luke's trying to handle this thing. And Bo's supposed to trust him to do all the talking, but he's not terribly willing to let Luke talk himself into a whipping. Not when Jesse'd die of a broken heart if he had to do it.

Not that it matters. That is one heck of a red face that Jesse's cultivating at the end of the table, fingers clutching at the napkin sitting next to his fork, like he's wringing a tiny neck.

"Which is it? A couple of months or a few years?" Low eyebrows over bugged-out and disbelieving eyes that look from one nephew to the other.

(Should have stayed invisible, Bo.)

He was fifteen when this thing started and even if Luke hadn't yet turned eighteen, even if Bo started it and wanted it with everything in him, it's not going to matter one bit to Jesse. Luke's the older one, supposed to know better, supposed to be careful with those younger than him. Never supposed to let them feel the full power of his strength or lead them toward danger.

"I," he says loudly, trying to talk over whatever Luke's going to say. "Been trying to get it started for years." But it's not necessary to shout. Luke's got nothing to say, isn't even trying to answer the question. He's too busy staring at Bo, eyebrow raised in morbid fascination over whatever's going to come out of his mouth next. Jesse's reasonably rapt, too, and Daisy's eyes are rounder than the pancakes she tried to cook this morning. Wondering, maybe, when this tale is going to get around to her contribution, but it won't. He's not going to let it. "But, Luke, he only settled into it recent."

Silence starts right then and carries on to eternity and back again. Jesse's eyes stop looking so mean; the anger's wearing off, but the shock's still there. Big and round and wet, then he blinks and they clear again.

"Uncle Jesse—" _breathe_ , is what he wants to say. Prove that you're not turning to stone, cold and hardened by sadness, rooted right there on the spot.

"How many years?" comes out like a man coming back from working the mines in another state to learn that his wife and kids have been killed. All that time and risk he put into trying to earn a living for his family and there's no one left at home to feed after all.

"Since before the Marines," Luke says, and it's like he's admitting to being the murderer.

* * *

"I ain't," Jesse says finally, and it's so quiet, so sane and so far from the reaction he expected that Luke feels clumsy. Awkward, his hands on the table on either side of his plate because somehow he thought he might need them there. Like maybe this thing would turn into a fistfight (though he knows that's ridiculous) and he wouldn't want to get caught unprepared. Now his hands are out there in the open, exposed when he'd rather have them trapped in his armpits. "Exactly proud of neither of you."

Bo is as far from Jesse as he can get and still be sitting at the same table. Even so, Luke sees his head dip at those words and it's the same kind of annoying gesture it always has been. The boy is far too easy to shame, especially when it comes to Jesse. More than three years on his own and he might as well still be a skinny little kid in short pants, begging the old man not to whip him this time because he really didn't mean it and he'll never do it again.

Maybe, after all these years (and just a few days ago Bo insisting that he wanted to come home and he was perfectly willing to face Jesse if that was what had to be done), he has the right to expect his cousin to keep his chin up and say that choosing to be with Luke isn't anything at all to feel bad about. And maybe he's a fool.

"Not for how you treated that girl," Jesse elaborates. Or maybe just tries to make him act just as ashamed as Bo is.

"I ain't never lied to her."

"You ain't exactly told her the truth, neither. Else she wouldn't be pining over you none." Ridge between the old man's brows and it's not a gentle look, more like the kind that suggests he needs to decide right quick which is more important to him, his hide or his pride.

But he had been honest with Hannah.

 _("There ain't a single thing wrong with you." It sounded like a thin excuse even when it was the truth. The kind of thing a teenager would say and he was half embarrassed that he didn't have anything better to offer her. But_ it ain't your fault that you ain't Bo _didn't seem like it would help anything, so he didn't say it. "It ain't you, it's me." Sitting in his uncle's pickup truck on the bank of the pond, and he really could just as easily be a much younger version of himself, dumping a girl for no good reason._

_Dark out here, but there was enough moonlight to see the clouds in her eyes, her lower lip pressing up against the top one, wobbling. Her thin fingers shaking in her lap and she was trying to think or trying to control herself, but it wasn't going to work for long._

" _What does that even mean? It's not you, it's me—I don't—that doesn't mean anything, Luke."_

" _It means I can't be faithful to you."_

" _You've got another girl?" she asked and funny thing about those tears at the corner of her eyes, how they didn't look so much sad as angry. Bo was like that, too, cried when he got mad and it wasn't any fair. It was trying to make him be gentle when what he really needed was to be fair._

" _No," was at least the truth._

" _But there's someone else you want to be with."_

_Damn Bo and his stupid kiss, damn his impulsivity and his adamant denial of reason, damn him for breaking the rules that they'd managed to abide by for three damn years and—_

_Damn him for kissing back. For wanting what he'd told himself he couldn't have. For ever sending Bo away, for not sending him so far away he'd never see him again, damn him for being such a miserable fool that he couldn't be fair to Hannah, couldn't be fair to Bo, couldn't be fair to himself._

" _Yes," he answered._

_Hannah blinked; despite the fact that it hadn't been a question on her part, she still hadn't expected that answer. Or the bluntness of it, maybe she'd wanted him to be a gentleman and break it to her a little easier. Not that it mattered, he was a Duke, raised to be honest and the blink of a response he got only loosened the tears from her eyes._

_A good man would probably have hugged her or something, patted her shoulder and told her again that it wasn't her fault. Bo probably would have cried with her, the two of them snuffling and getting pink in the face together._

_A good man wouldn't have held out his hand for the ring he'd given her even as her shaking right-hand fingers pulled it off._

_But he never had been a good man, and it was about time she accepted that as the fact that it was.)_

"And," Jesse adds, because there's always an and. Something else they did wrong, some extra scolding that has to be added like an exclamation point on the old man's righteous anger. "I ain't proud of how you treated each other, neither. If you," pointing at Luke's chest, "love _him_ ," disgusted tone on that part, "you don't go getting engaged to someone else. And if you," fat finger tracking unsteadily over to Bo. Could be age or it could just be that they've driven him to the kind of anger that leaves him unable to manage fine motor control. "Love him, then you don't go running off to NASCAR without him."

"Yes, sir," Bo mumbles, because he's the good boy, the one who always learns his lessons on the first try. The one who looks contrite because he is, because he never means to make anyone mad. Everything he does is just for fun and it's always a shame when someone gets upset about it, ruins what would otherwise be perfectly simple joy.

"Now what you done," is shaping up to be a fine lecture. One that's as familiar as the ratty blanket that sits on the back of the couch, the one they all wrap around themselves on days when the fireplace can't quite cut through the chill. And it's just as full of holes. Bo's contrition seems somehow to have made them all forget exactly what they're talking about here. "Was sneaky and dishonest. And maybe that's my fault. Maybe I taught you boys a little too much about moonshine and revenuers, and not enough about family." Or girls, maybe now the old man's regretting all those times he lectured them about being good to girls and wishes he'd told them to get with as many as they wanted. (Not that they needed to be sanctioned in that regard. Bo alone made his way through half the town's young virgins.) "And how you don't never lie to family."

"Uncle Jesse," Daisy butts in and it had just about been possible to forget she was there until now. Sucking in a deep and shaky breath because she's not used to interrupting or sassing or otherwise being Jesse's difficult-to-handle child. Somewhere along the line she has picked up Bo's fork from his plate that sits in front of her, and is fiddling with it in her fingers. It's almost cute how she reminds him of Enos playing with his hat when he's upset. "They didn't never really lie to us. They just—" didn't tell the truth and she can defend them all she wants, but everyone in this room knows they were wrong.

"Daisy," Bo interrupts because he always has figured it's his place to protect her. Even if he has ended up with a few knots on his skull for his efforts, dating back to the time she hit him over the head with her sand bucket in third grade. That one came after Bo knocked out Bobby Rogers' front tooth when the fool boy got it into his head to kiss her. It was only after the fistfight started rolling across the schoolyard that it became plenty clear that Daisy was perfectly willing to be kissed.

"Bo," she snaps back. "All I was saying is—"

"Would you hush up?" Bo insists and this could be any Monday morning, any discussion over whose turn it is to scrub the floors or who didn't change whose oil.

"Uncle Jesse." Now this, right here poses quite the conundrum. Daisy has turned to their uncle to defend her against Bo, while she defends Bo and Luke against Jesse, who would defend his kids to the death if the threat came from the likes of Rosco Coltrane. But it doesn't, it comes from right here amongst the four of them, and it's just too much.

"Luke," Jesse says in that voice that puts an abrupt ending to any thought of squabbling. His face isn't an entirely healthy color, either. Bo and Daisy distracted him too well, and now it's awfully late in the game to be realizing that Jesse's slow simmer has turned into a full out, rolling boil. The kind that's set to flood this here kitchen. And it's all focused down on him. "You get out there and clean up Maudine's stall. You boys didn't do half the job on chores that you should have." Give or take the fact that cleaning her stall has always been an after breakfast task.

"Uncle Jesse," Bo complains because he never has known when to let go, when to just give in and shut his mouth.

"Now, Luke." _Yes, sir_. Because it's exactly what he wants to do, go clean manure, when breakfast is already staging a rebellion in his stomach. Chair feet scrape against the floor, sounds like too much noise for just one chair. Shadow from his left that tells him Bo is on his feet, too. So is Jesse, it turns out, and the only one left sitting is Daisy. Give her and her heels a few seconds and they'll be up, too. "Bo, you just stay right where you are. You're a guest in this house and you ain't going to be doing no heavy chores."

There's more, Luke figures. Bo protesting and Uncle Jesse standing his ground. A standoff that threatens to get ugly, but it won't. Once he's out of sight, Bo will become obedient again and Daisy will take the path of least resistance.

Luke steps out, closes the door behind him whisper-quiet, and heads out to face a morning of mule shit. Wonders how long it might be before Jesse follows him out, maybe with a toothbrush that'll be offered up as the appropriate tool for scrubbing the whole barn until it shines.


	24. Chapter 24

"Uncle Jesse," he says again – not that he thinks he wasn't heard the first time, just ignored.

"Bo." His own name echoing back at him isn't so much angry as tired. Maybe wary, maybe just asking him not to talk any more, not to say things that Jesse doesn't want to hear. A hand up in the air to second the sentiment. "Daisy," the old man says, "I reckon you'd best go to work like you said you was going to." Back when this whole, uncomfortable argument started. Back before she came mighty close to admitting that she's known about Bo and Luke's relationship for some time before they got up the gumption to come and tell him, and maybe the old man doesn't want to hear that outright. Doesn't want to know that along with two lying sissy-boys he's raised a sneaky, secretive girl. "And then shopping."

She takes in a breath like maybe she thinks she has more to say on the subject, but she looks up into Jesse's eyes and stops her tongue before it can get out whatever it is she's thinking. Pushes her hands against the table to stand up and picks up Bo's plate that's still sitting in front of her like she's going to take it to the sink.

"Leave that for your cousin," Jesse says, "and just go on. Seems like you got a busy day in front of you. And he ain't had a proper breakfast." Oh, his stomach clenches at that. "I'll do the dishes."

"I ain't hungry," comes out as something of a squeak. Daisy nods at their uncle and puts Bo's plate back in front of him anyway; she's fought enough of his battles for him today. Whether he eats or not is none of her business when she's got to get to work, after all. She heads back to her room, probably to pick up those shorts that constitute her uniform. Just to make the charade that she planned to go to work all along that much more ridiculous.

"Sit, boy," Jesse tells him. "You ain't wasting good food."

"Yes, sir." The old man sits back down at the head of the table. Oh, this is going to be torture.

"Bye, Uncle Jesse," Daisy says as she passes by again on her way to the door. Eyes round at the way he's trapped in here with his uncle and about to be alone – or maybe just at her own near-miss at going a few rounds with the strap. She dares to kiss the old man on the top of his head. "See you later, Bo," with a wave that tries to be light and cheerful but carries the burden of wondering whether she actually will see him later and if so, precisely what condition he'll be in. The door opens and closes and there's nothing left but him, the food and the nearly painful weight of his uncle's stare.

"I figure," he tries, looking at the cold grease that's left a dark ring around the sausage. "That I really ought to be helping Luke." Or otherwise just getting out the front door like his cousins did before him. Cowards.

If Jesse were wearing his glasses, he'd be peering over them at him now. Without them the glare is just that much meaner. "I reckon you'd best eat. Then, if you're so all-fired anxious to do something for Maudine, you can go and get her some oats." It's not, despite any appearances to the contrary, a suggestion so much as an order. "She's partial to them ones you can get at Smith and Streeble." Which is all the way out in Cedar City. Great, he's going to be leaving Jesse alone with Luke for at least an hour and a half, even if he does drive there and back at NASCAR speeds.

* * *

The distance between the echo of the jeep's receding engine and that of the General is approximately one-eighth of a clean-down-to-the-mud stall. Longer than he would have guessed, but otherwise it's pretty much proceeding as he figured. The breeze through the barn feels good; he's worked up a sweat. But it also means that his uncle has arrived, just like they both knew he would.

The Dukes – all four of them that are alive to this day – have an unspoken understanding. Daisy's a crier and Bo's the baby, so when the time comes for lectures and whippings, Luke's going to get them. Or they'll be focused at him while the other two cower and watch and otherwise know that they are guilty by association.

And, in truth, Luke wouldn't have it any other way. He came out here when he was sent because it means that at least Daisy and Bo aren't going to have to bear witness to this one.

"I suppose I should tell you," he says into the stony silence with which he is faced. That silent treatment has never worked the way his uncle wants it to, but Jesse keeps on trying it anyway. By now it'd really figure that he should know better. "That I got a job offer from Bo's boss up in Mooresville."

Dirty look for all the secrets kept, when he's still holding one or two back. "I didn't come out here to talk to you about that."

"I know you ain't." He puts the rake up against the side of the stall, for now. He's got all day to finish this task that has no reason to be all that terrible, other than the fact that Jesse's going to be notably particular about how well it's done. And it's for the best if he looks at his uncle through this part. "I just thought you should know."

"Why, Luke?" The question is bigger than this side discussion about job offers, it encompasses everything. The whole morning and the years that preceded it. Everything that's happened since that one summer's day before he went off to serve his country.

He looks down to the mud and muck on his boots, then back up to his uncle's eyes. Hands on his hips and he shrugs. Maudine, out in her pasture, lets out a quiet little nicker that reminds them both that she's there. (And that she's on Jesse's side of this thing because she's on Jesse side of everything that has ever happened.) The mud hasn't given him an answer, Jesse's eyes haven't, and Maudine's little noises won't either.

"Why was it Lavinia for you?"

It's the kind of question Daisy has probably asked, maybe as a teen when she was first dating or maybe when she was getting serious about L.D. while watching Enos wither away in the wings. It's nothing that Luke has ever really thought about before; Lavinia was his aunt like Jesse was his uncle and there'd never been any picking or choosing. It just was, like the sun in the sky and the grass on the ground.

He's not really questioning it now, either, it's all hypothetical. Which is good, because Jesse has no intention of answering the question as it was posed.

"Me and Lavinia wasn't cousins." No, they weren't. You have to go back a little further in the Duke lineage to find cousins marrying cousins, but not too far. Luke's raised eyebrow is enough to put an end to that line of reasoning.

And open up another, far more pertinent one. "And me and Lavinia, why we could walk right into town hand in hand, and right up them steps and into the church to say our 'I dos' in front of the minister and God himself." Finger pointing angrily off to the side in the general direction of town, eyes glazed over with memories of better times. "You two can't even—" Jesse's face frowns deeply on the one side, his eyes squinted in disgust as he figures out what he's willing to say. "Look at each other funny or Rosco's going to be reading you your rights."

But not putting handcuffs on them, not if it means touching. Rosco's the sort to believe in germs and cooties and getting too close to a sissy-boy might just make you a sissy, too.

"And Boss will be watching your every move. And mine and Daisy's and you'll have to hide every part of it, Luke. Every part."

"We hid it this long, ain't we?" He runs his hand through his hair, takes a few high steps to get out of the muck of the stall. Figures it might be easier to have this conversation if he could breathe. (And then figures it would be easier to breathe if he weren't having this conversation. Remembers that there was an excellent reason he avoided getting into this relationship with Bo. Best reason ever and it looked and smelled exactly like this.) "There ain't no reason to figure we'd do nothing to get caught."

"How long has this been going on?" Jesse asks again in a tone that seems to have resolved itself to accepting that it's happened at all. That there's no point in denying it and probably none in trying to talk him out of it. At least right now. "Really?"

Luke meets his eyes and stares into them, trying to figure out exactly what Jesse's willing to know. Maudine nickers again to indicate that she already knows more than she wants to. What with all the noise he and Bo made over her head last night.

"Luke," his uncle says darkly, in that voice that offers a whipping. But it's not the threat that matters. "Tell me." It's that underneath that, Jesse's scared. Knowing the details isn't going to change that, Luke doesn't figure. But they've played with shades of the truth for too long now. Omission is still a lie if it's done deliberately.

"Like Bo said, before I went into the Marines."

Jesse doesn't like that one. It's there in the way his shoulders lower themselves under the thick layer of his denim jacket, the way he uses his foot to shoo a nosy chicken that's wandered in to see what all the fuss is about.

"That why you went?"

He looks back at Maudine's stall, figures he might just prefer it if the old man had brought out his toothbrush and ordered him to start scrubbing with it, so long as he left him to it in silence. Crime followed by punishment, it's a simple equation. Not one he ever liked when he was younger, but he can see the benefit now. Because after punishment there's forgiveness, or if not that, at least a fresh start. All this talking – it's the grown up version, maybe. No whip, not even a full out tongue lashing. Just slumped shoulders and quiet questions that don't really want answers. No skin gets broken, no one hollers and no one feels better afterward, either.

"Partly," Luke admits. They fought over it, he and Jesse did, at the time. The military was fine in theory, a good choice for a boy in need of discipline like him. If, that was, there hadn't been the fact of war to be considered. Jesse was all for him getting settled down. Just not getting killed. "I reckon I might have gone anyway. I wanted to see the world." To get away from the dusty roads and crumbling barns, the fields lined with the same old trees and the clouds that got caught between mountain ridges and hung overhead for days at a time. And to give Bo time to outgrow him or be grown up enough to make a reasonable decision, anyway.

"He dated girls while you was gone." Evidence against Luke's side of the story or just the last lingering denial of what he doesn't want to believe to be true.

"He dated girls when I got back, too. So did I." And then they'd dated the same girls, switched off from time to time, stuck as many girls between them as they could until there weren't any left and it was just them. And nothing had changed.

"I don't appreciate what you done to Hannah." Maudine's whinny from outside agrees with that one.

"I don't reckon she appreciates it neither." Jesse's eyes pop at that one, his mouth opening and his knuckles turning white as he starts to shove himself to his feet again. Luke holds up a hand to stay him. "She don't know nothing about me and Bo. I ain't told her nothing and I ain't got no plans to, neither."

Because, in the end, Hannah is not a Duke. Came mighty close to being one but never quite made it and though Jesse would have accepted her as a daughter (or a niece, really) she's not a part of the family and can't be trusted with secrets like this.

It's like moonshining all over again, what they can't say and who they can't say it to. Except that back then everyone knew what it was that they weren't talking about, what they did in deep shadows where no one ever looked. This time no one can ever be allowed to guess. Luke knows that, has known it all along and doesn't need Jesse to tell him so.

"Jesse, I tried. Me and Bo both did." He looks down at the dirt of the barn floor again, and the little bits of loose straw that he's going to have to get cleared away before the old man's going to be happy with his progress. "We tried living here together and just being cousins. Dating girls," and running moonshine, but they screwed that up, too. Racing and brawling at the Boar's Nest. "It didn't work." Not for long, anyway.

"You got him that job at NASCAR."

Yes, he did, and that part was never a secret. He tries to remember now whether Jesse knew he was looking for a job for himself first, but found the one for Bo instead. Not that it matters.

"I wanted him to have options." A pair of raised eyebrows doubts his story or his motives and he doesn't care. "He wouldn't have gotten the job if he wasn't good enough. All I done was get a scout down here." And Bo had done the rest all on his own, right up to leaving Luke behind. "Didn't work though. Or it did, but only for a while. In the end, us living apart almost destroyed Bo." Another skeptical look for that one and Jesse heaves himself up to his feet with a grunt and an audible pop of his left knee. "We tried everything. I reckon the only thing left is for us to be together."

"Get back to work," his uncle commands, turns to leave him behind.

_Yes, sir._

"I got that offer up in Mooresville," he reminds Jesse. Creak of the stall door as he opens it, punctuating his words. "And Boss, he's willing to let me out of my probation so long as I got the job and a reason to stay out of Hazzard." That, he figures, is the last of the secrets he's kept from the man who raised him better than that. Jesse turns back to look at him. "We could go right on back to Mooresville. It'd probably be good for Bo. He's got a good chance to make a real name for himself on the circuit over the next couple of seasons." Jesse nods that he has heard what Luke's offering, turns to go again. "It'd be a shame, though," Luke calls. Picks up the rake and starts digging at the ground again. "Since all he wants to do is come back home to live here in Hazzard."

* * *

It would have made sense if he'd come home to find that Luke had been sent out on some errand of his own, maybe off to find a left-handed screwdriver or a can of striped paint. But when he got home he found Luke sitting on the pasture fence watching Maudine do not much of anything at all. Looking for all the world like someone's little boy with nothing better to do than daydream about a mule.

It would have made sense if, when he went inside to tell Jesse he was back with the oats, the old man had told him to stay away from Luke or asked him to come sit and talk for a while, but he didn't. He just thanked Bo for his thoughtfulness and followed him back outside to help him unload them into the uncannily tidy barn.

It would have made sense if clouds had descended or a tornado had dropped out of the sky, if Luke and Jesse had glowered at each other when they met in the middle of the barn, but they didn't. Luke just took the burlap sack of oats that Jesse was carrying and tossed it on the pile. Asked if there was any more in the trunk of the General, and whether there was anything else he could help with.

It would have made sense if Jesse had sent Luke off to mend fences that weren't even broken. To the far end of the property or down to the widow Thompson's to mend her unbroken fence or out into the county as a whole to search for unbroken fences to mend. But he didn't, just said he was fixing to put together a soup for lunch and he would appreciate it if the two of them helped him by setting the table in a few minutes.

It would have made sense for lunch to be noisy. For an argument to break out like pimples on a teenaged boy's face before his first date, especially when Daisy quietly handed Luke the ring he'd dropped that morning. But it didn't, the meal was quiet and stiff, almost awkward, and fortunately quick. The afternoon followed, Luke under the hood of Jesse's pickup, asking Bo to hand him one tool after another and giving up no useful information whatsoever, not when Jesse was sitting on the porch, watching their progress.

An oil change, a few belts replaced, plugs and gaps checked. Everything in order and they were about to have to stoop to washing the truck just for something to do when Daisy came home. From working and shopping that never needed to be done, but at least there were a few bags to carry and keep them busy.

It would have made sense if Daisy kicked them out of the kitchen when the cooking started up. Told them to stay out of her way and get lost somewhere, that she'd let them know when there was something worth eating in here. But she didn't because really, none of them wanted to be alone. Not with Jesse skulking around and not a one of them could tell his mood, what his quiet demeanor meant when they were all expecting to get screamed at. So he and Luke put themselves to work, cutting up vegetables and otherwise just crowding the kitchen.

It would have made sense for dinner to be as quiet and uncomfortable as lunch, but it wasn't. Daisy kept chattering about nothing much at all, and Bo answered her back just the same; fast and with forced, near-manic cheer. Because they were a pair of deer waiting for the hunter to just go ahead and shoot them, or at least for Luke and Jesse to tell them whether anything had gotten settled at all.

It would have made sense if the evening had been short, if everyone had scattered to their respective corners just to get away from each other and the multi-ton elephant in the room (Bo decided it was probably some garish shade of puce, something near-blinding, what with the way none of them could stand to look at it), but it wasn't. There was a good bit of sitting in the living room, each of them on their own separate piece of furniture, no one touching anyone else or even getting close enough to do so by mistake. Daisy, humming along with the radio, tapping her foot and still somehow being behind the rhythm, while darning something or other. Jesse with his Bible prominently propped on his knee, reading with studious interest and likely seeking out all the passages that assured that his nephews would be toasted like marshmallows upon their death. Luke reading some old paperback book with the cover so worn that Bo couldn't tell what it was, and him just… sitting there. Magazine in front of him like a prop, yellow Mustang convertible with black trim staring him in the face, tick after tick on the wooden clock perched on the high shelf. Waiting for someone to declare it bedtime just so the slow torture could pause long enough for a few hours of sleep.

Now, finally, he finds himself alone in the bedroom he grew up in, and it's the first thing that's made sense since breakfast. Luke heading wordlessly off to the room he built out of a porch, the one that everyone still thinks of as Luke-and-Hannah's-room, because if he and Bo don't go behind the same closed door together, it'll put everyone's mind at rest.

Except Bo's, maybe. He drifts around the edges of sleep for a while like water circling the drain, but it doesn't seem to have truly taken. The watch on his wrist says something about 1:15, and back in Mooresville no one would bat an eye about him being up at this time, but here on the farm where everything went near-silent hours back but for the creaks and groans of the house itself, there's no beer or friends to keep him company. The second night in a row of light sleep and he wonders, idly, if he were to slip out the window and up to the loft in the barn, whether Luke would meet him there. Maybe, but then Luke probably didn't sleep at all last night and may not be in any condition to sneak off anywhere. He wants to go down to that other room, wants Luke to come here. The beds are smaller here, but they're purer. Not tainted by the notion of Luke sharing them with anyone else.

He quits lying around on his back, staring in the general direction of the ceiling and trying to pick shapes out of nothingness, when he hears a floorboard crack. It's not Luke; too slow with a slight shuffle, but he gets up anyway. Finds a tee shirt to cover his bare chest just so he doesn't get chastised for being half-naked, and tiptoes out the door. Toward the kitchen, where the light's too bright and there's a faint smell of coffee. Left over from yesterday or brewing right now – it's hard to tell.

And there, at the head of table, as though he's been sitting there all along, is Uncle Jesse. Long, white nightshirt the only concession to the fact that it's after midnight rather than midafternoon.

If he were Luke, he would walk right in and sit down next to the old timer. He'd pour himself a cup of coffee and jut his chin in defiance of the inevitable lecture.

He's not Luke, so he comes in quietly and sits at the far end of the table. Doesn't jut any part of himself, and offers up half a smile when the old man looks up at him. Honey for the flies in the silent hope that they will not take mean little bites out of his hide.

Jesse goes back to staring into that dingy coffee mug, the same one he's used every day of his life since Lavinia gave it to him one Christmas. Must be at least fifteen years old, and if it was a person it'd be learning to drive by now. Never gets a full wash, just a quick rinse now and again, and it's full more often than it's empty. But when it comes right down to it, it's not all that interesting. Nothing that both he and Jesse should be spending so much time studying.

As if he recognizes that fact, Jesse looks up at him again. "Bo," the old man says like it's taken him this long to realize who it is sitting across from him. "What can I do for you?"

 _Whip me_ doesn't sound like the sort of thing a sane man would say. _Yell at me or whatever it is that you are going to do, because spending the day waiting for you to get around to it has driven me just about squirrelly._

"I figured maybe you had something to say to me," he ventures.

Jesse tips his head just slightly to one side. Lets the words hang there between them, like he's tied up a noose and is just watching them swing and sway in the breeze until there's no movement left. Then he lets his head drop down, bushy brows hiding his eyes, and sips at his coffee. Looks up again, and lifts one eyebrow. Like he's surprised to find Bo still waiting.

"Can't think of anything," he offers, finally.

It's a trap. Mean old moonshiner's trap with a false floor for a sucker to fall right through, rocks and sharp sticks at the bottom and there might just be a rattlesnake in there, too.

"Come on, Uncle Jesse. I reckon you had some things to say to Luke after you sent me off to Cedar City this morning."

"Maybe I did," sounds like his uncle is talking to some manner of lawman. Not confessing to anything at all, accidentally or on purpose. "But whether I did or didn't, it ain't got nothing to do with you."

Or maybe it's more of a bear trap, steel teeth gleaming through the browned kudzu, just waiting for a careless boy to trip the trigger.

"Of course it's got something to do with me, Jesse." He never has been nearly as cautious as he should be when walking through an unknown wilderness. He's got a few scars to prove it, and Luke's got a few more from having to turn back and pull Bo out of whatever he's gotten himself into. "Me and Luke's," that thing that they said this morning. That thing that's a lot harder to get out when he's alone in the quiet of the kitchen with his uncle and that dark stare that's getting offered up over the lip of the mug. Long pause, then that eyebrow again. Inviting him to go on. "There ain't nothing about Luke that ain't also about me," he tries. Fails. That eyebrow doesn't give up its quest for more information.

It's a test within a trap. Passing the first won't count for much. The second's due to snap shut and when it does it's not going to matter whether the moments before were made of whispered brilliance or screamed stupidity. It's still going to hurt like hell.

"We's together."

"Oh, well," Jesse says, goes back to his coffee. Seems like the cup should have been empty by now, but he's not going to quibble. Not going to suggest his uncle get up onto his feet and walk closer to him. "I reckon I said all I had to say on that this morning."

"To Luke," Bo reminds him. "You ain't said nothing to me. Except that I was a guest." Which borders on the edge of insult, really. Might as well call Bo an imbecile. "I ain't no guest." Of course, guests are spared the whip. Maybe he's an imbecile after all. "I reckon if you had something to say to Luke, you got something to say to me."

Jesse finally puts the mug down, away from himself. His elbows come up onto the table in a way that would get Bo smacked if he dared to do it, but the old man can get away with it.

"I reckon," the old man says and his posture is intimate. Like he's telling Bo a secret. "That it's as much my fault as it is yours, what happened between you and Luke." As if it were a one time thing, a mistake that can be shoved under the rug and forgotten about later. His face is heating up, his hands under the table knotting into fists. He tries to figure out how it is that Luke always looks so calm, even when he's just about to pound the tar out of someone. "I had him looking after you from the time you was hardly more than babies. You spent so much time together that I guess that you didn't have no time to figure out who you was going to be, separate from him."

"Uncle Jesse, that don't make no sense. You didn't have nothing to do with me and Luke getting together." Other than being Luke's best excuse for all those years. "And I been separate from him plenty of times. When he was in the Marines, and then being at NASCAR." Traps, he tries to remind himself, require the cooperation of the victim. They have to be walked into, after all, their triggers released. And he needs to slow down, to think more and talk less. "Besides," but he's a racecar driver. Full speed ahead, laughing at danger. "Luke ain't never made me nothing I wasn't already." And it's a matter of honor, anyway. Or pride, one of those and he never has been terrific at telling the two apart. Even if the first one is a virtue and the second one is a deadly sin. "Anything I done, it was because I wanted to."

There goes that eyebrow again, little quirk at the corner of Jesse's mouth, half hidden by beard. It's a familiar look, one that he used to get often. Luke would smirk, too, even if he was the one who'd always started all the trouble. _Trying to talk yourself into a whipping?_ Luke would say and Jesse's mouth would flatten back into a straight line and his finger would come to a point out toward the barn because Luke was getting a whipping for sure and unless Bo bit his tongue right quick, he'd be getting one too.

He realizes, now, that there were far too many times that he let Luke take his lickings for him. Kept his hind end from being warmed back then but he's been paying for it ever since.

"Uncle Jesse," he says, tries to remind himself to keep quiet because Daisy's sleeping and Luke – well, if he's ever going to get Jesse to take his part of this relationship seriously, he needs to keep Luke away from this discussion. He's got to handle himself alone this time. "It was me that started this thing with Luke, not the other way around." But he as much as said that already this morning and it doesn't seem to have made a dent in Jesse's thinking. "You can't help who you love." That's the more pertinent point, anyway. Even if his voice rises dangerously when he says it, like he's six years old and trying to convince the old man that he did so do his chores before running off to play. The chickens must have messed up the barn again after he was done, is all.

The twist at the corner of Jesse's mouth doesn't seem to notice that none of this is anything like a joke to Bo. The stare off into the shadows of the living room doesn't seem to be concerned about Bo at all. "Oh, I reckon I know about fools in love. Or fools that think they're in love anyway."

"Jesse—" is somewhere between a sigh and a whine, whatever sound he reckons he has to make to get the old man to listen to him, to take him seriously.

"Bo," comes back at him, not angry or telling him to hush before he gets himself into more trouble than he can rightly handle. "Ain't you never met a girl that you figure you could love?"

_(Of all the Reed team parties, the July Fourth parties were always the best. Funny thing how the race schedule always delayed them until late August, but it didn't matter when Itchy spent the whole summer collecting an arsenal of fireworks that would put an army to shame. As soon as it was dark he'd set them off in crazy cacophony of colors and sounds that was nothing like any municipal fireworks display._

_But that only came at the end. First there was the day spent outdoors, cooking on the grill, playing horseshoes and Frisbee and whatever form of baseball could be played with teams of no more than five men. Football, sometimes, full tackle as long as there weren't too many wives or girlfriends around to tell them not to be fools and get themselves hurt. Romping around on an open field getting sunburned and if it didn't quite smell like farmland, it least it didn't smell like exhaust either. Just fresh cut grass and sweat, because it was always hot._

_And usually the strips of tire tread that got drawn in the week before were suspiciously stacked to leave Chief Meade holding the short one. Which made sense when he had a strectch of property that would host a bunch of NASCAR rowdies who didn't know any better than to run around like unruly children. It wasn't all that different from the summer's end parties in Hazzard Square. Except there was no man in white wandering around, puffing on a cigar, crossing out the figures on hand-lettered signs, raising prices on hotdogs and funnel cakes and beer that no one would buy anyway, not when they brought their own._

_Everything at Chief's parties was free and tasted better than what Hogg served anyway. Smelled good, too, which was why he spent a good bit of time standing next to the grill. Even if Cassie and Wendy wouldn't let him get anywhere near a spatula, and made a show of pretending to shoo him away. Didn't work, mostly because they didn't mean it. They were both married, sure – Cassie to Lem and Wendy to Chief – but he cut his teeth on women like them, that glint in their eyes, the blush across Wendy's cheeks and the smiles they both offered up. They liked looking at him, even if they weren't allowed to touch. He was, he knew, perfectly welcome to stick close and sip his beer while tossing his hair around. To complain of the heat and pull his shirt off._

_To let himself be teased._

" _Bo Duke," Cassie started and she sounded like every bad girl in Hazzard, the kind who figured that daddies and big brothers were insignificant obstacles to their ultimate happiness. "Why, I do believe that your eyes are bluer than they were at Christmas." Which was probably the last time he'd seen her. Couldn't swear it, but it seemed likely, since she never traveled with the team or came out to the Mooresville Tavern when they were on home turf, either. Always back at the house taking care of the little boys, Tanner and Timothy. (And if his eyes were bluer now than last time they saw each other, well, her belly was rounder. No official announcement had been made, but Bo reckoned she was probably carrying a Tyler or a Tammy.) For once, she wasn't on child-rearing duty, what with Lem holding onto Timothy and trying to teach Tanner how to throw a horseshoe. Generous of the man to free his wife up to do the cooking._

" _They get that way when they're looking at a pretty lady." It wasn't a lie – at least not the pretty part. Cassie's pug nose covered in freckles, her straw-colored hair in curls around her face, her lean frame (around that belly, anyway) and her easy smile made her really nice to look at. The part about his eyes getting bluer just from looking at her, well, he had no idea whether it was true or not._

" _I bet you say that to all the girls," Wendy butted in, though Bo had quite notably not said it to her. She was older, not quite Lulu Hogg's age, but enough that he could borrow from his trusty older-lady repertoire of flirtation for her._

" _Don't you look nice today." A wink and a smile, because older hearts melted with just that little, wrinkles up around eyes got more pronounced with the answering smile, chins doubled up and no one ever had any fantasies that anything more would happen._

" _How come some pretty little girl ain't snatched you up for her very own?" Wendy asked, then walked over to shoo a bunch of flies away from the mound of hotdog buns that stood just far enough away from the grill to keep from being toasted. Not that it mattered a whole lot; the buns were kind of like napkins – just something to put between your fingers and the scalding heat of the just cooked meat. The birds would end up eating a lot more rolls than the partiers._

" _Because I ain't stood still long enough to let them catch me," was strictly the truth. "And," he added, standing up to his full height and shaking the hair out of his eyes, "because you're already taken."_

_Wendy's giggles were loud enough to get half the guys from the team to look up from where they sat in their lawn chairs or stood by the horseshoe pit, sipping their beers. Wendy flushed up an adorable shade of pink as she gathered up a half dozen rolls, Bo laughed and everyone else went right back to whatever they had been doing._

" _You're incorrigible," Wendy informed him, coming back to the grill, picking up the long fork and pointing it at him. He winked again and she skewered one hotdog at a time and crammed them into the rolls, then put them onto a plate. She handed one off to Bo on her way past him to carry the rest to the men of the team who were too lazy to come up and get one themselves._

" _Y'all got any mustard?" he asked Cassie._

" _Mustard?" she answered back, wrinkling her nose the same as she did every time she discovered all over again that he ate his hotdogs slathered in mustard. "And to think, I liked you up until now." She turned around and fished through the row of paper bags behind her anyway, pulling out napkins and cups and plastic forks before finding a yellow squeeze bottle at the bottom of one. "Here you go," she said, nose still wrinkled against the thought._

" _Don't look," he advised as he tucked his beer in between his elbow and his rib cage, then took the mustard from her. Tipped it up over his hotdog, squeezed it until it plopped a line of mustard onto the meat with a rude little slurp, then handed it back to her so she could hide it in the bag again. Or otherwise just keep it back here by the grill so no one else would get the crazy idea to go putting it on their hotdogs._

" _Bo," she started, got interrupted by his long reach grabbing for the fork and rolling a hotdog away from where a flame licked up through the grill, threatening to blacken it until it would be about as tasty as charcoal. "Ain't you ever been serious a moment in your life?"_

" _Not if I can help it." But it hadn't been as easy since he'd moved to Mooresville. Used to be he could have as much fun as he wanted because Luke did all his thinking and Jesse did all the worrying._

" _Well, I think a steady girl would do you good. You'd be less lonely." Not true. Girls were good enough to touch and hold, to make the thorough physical acquaintance of. But when that got done, he was left hollow, empty. Wishing he'd never met the poor girl, never found his way into bed with her. "Ain't you ever met a girl you really loved?"_

" _I guess I ain't the settling-down type."_

_She laughed, those curls around her ears bouncing, and took the fork from him. "Marriage ain't nothing to fear, Bo. It's nice, having someone to come home to. 'Least, that's what Lem says. Me, I'm the one at home, waiting." She giggled a bit at her own humor, and it was sad._

_Because, despite the way Lem told it, Bo figured that she didn't know and hadn't been quite so accommodating as the tales would have it._ The road is the road, _was how Lem put it._ What I do when I'm out there, _which meant girls, lots of them, sometimes two at a time_ , ain't Cassie's concern, and she knows it. Home is home and as long as that's where I hang my hat at the end of the season, she's happy. _Like it was some kind of agreement between the two of them, but it couldn't be. Not when Cassie was standing there in all innocence, telling him how good marriage could be._

_He shoved the last of the hotdog into his mouth, retrieved his beer from where it was still clenched against his side. Chewed, swallowed, kissed the two first fingers on his left hand and touched them to her cheek. Because he figured someone ought to treat her right. She had such a sweet way about her and he could remember being that innocent about love. Once upon a time, but by now he didn't believe in fairytales anymore.)_

"Aside from Diane, that is." Hard to know whether those words from Jesse are a jibe or a taunt or just a straight up question. His temper doesn't want to take the time to figure it out; his face is hot and his breathing as picked up, but he forces himself to sigh it back out. He did, after all, come out to the kitchen in an attempt to take his half of whatever punishment Jesse was willing to dole out. Luke gets the lectures and the whippings, most times, and Bo gets his past mistakes shoved under his nose. Hard to say which is worse.

He swallows, runs both hands through his hair. Considers asking for a mug of coffee because he really ought to be more awake for this conversation. Or excusing himself back to bed (or back to Luke's bed, maybe) because he's not sure now what he's even doing here in the kitchen, trying to reason while in a diminished, sleep-deprived state.

"I don't reckon I ever loved Diane." When he's too tired to be clever and too awake to go back to bed, all he's got to offer is the facts.

"You was willing to leave home for her. To break up the family to be with her."

Maybe he was the only one who knew, at that time, that the breakup of the family was inevitable. Maybe he figured he had nothing to lose and then again, maybe that's hindsight. Maybe driving away from Luke had been—

"Just a way to hurt Luke," he explains. "That's all Diane was."

Even if it was him that cried when the General's wheels bumped off the farmyard and onto the road after he and Luke had that mean little fistfight.

"I reckon you was just trying to do the right thing, going off with that girl. Trying to settle down with her." Give or take the fact that a life with Diane would never be in any way settled. They would have been always on the move, but more than that, they would have fought like cats and dogs.

"If I was, it was only because of Luke. He was the one that kept saying we had to go with girls."

A test within a trap and Jesse's eyebrow raises again to tell him that he's failed the one and got caught in the other. Bo has never done a single thing separate from what Luke tells him to (but he has and both he and Jesse know it) and that's why Luke gets the talking to while Bo is allowed to go unpunished.

"I reckon I'll go back to bed." That's one thing, maybe, that NASCAR has taught him. Sometimes you lose, and when that happens, about all you can do is retreat to your pit and get ready for the next race. "Good night."

* * *

 _Thank you_ , he figures, would be appropriate. _How thoughtful of you to let me sleep when clearly I needed it or I would have gotten up on my own._

Maybe it's too much to ask of Bo to be grateful when everything's in disarray. Oh, the house is in perfect order; Daisy's return to Hazzard has seen to that. The barn's pretty tidy, too. Luke may have done chores on his own, but he's got a few years of practice at that, and besides, yesterday's punishment may not have been a lot of fun at the time, but it made this morning's chores go that much faster.

But the emotions of the family are all in a mess, and Bo's never handled that well. Back in their teenaged years he used to beg Luke to let go of whatever he thought was the principle of any matter that he and Jesse fought over, and just make peace. Many a split lip came from Bo starting schoolyard fights when emotions at home stayed unsettled for too long.

Not that waking up alone in a too-large and stone cold bed put Luke into a fine mood either. But Bo's bedroom door was closed and there was no sound inside when Luke pressed his ear against it, so he came out to set to the chores. Figured he was doing everyone a favor by staying on the outside of that door, by passing through the kitchen instead, sorting his work boots out from Bo's fancy ones and heading out to the barn.

"Luke," barked at him and it startles the goats, who weren't exactly happy with his cold fingers on their tender parts to begin with. "I ain't no guest in this house." Sadie bleats her own complaint in response and hops away from him. Luke leans back a bit on the milking stool, hands on his knees and looking down at the tipped pail that the goat left in her wake, milk seeping into the straw. So much for the tidy barn. But that's what unsettled quarrels do to Bo, make him create disasters that the whole family has to get together to fix. It's one way of restoring harmony, he supposes. "I can do my share of the chores, damn it!"

Luke lets out the air he'd been storing up in his lungs with a huff. Looks up to see Bo standing in the aisle of the barn, hands on his hips, yesterday's wrinkled and stained shirt across his chest, hair sticking out in the sort of directions that only happen when he's been fighting with his pillow most of the night. Eyes flashing anger and still he's the prettiest part of the morning. He puts the pinks and reds of sunrise to shame.

"All right?" Luke answers, not sure whether agreeing or fighting is the best course for settling his cousin down.

"Damn straight it's all right," Bo asserts, and Luke stands because he figures it's going to be the latter.

"Bo," he tries, but his cousin hurdles the gate into the goat pen in a fluid move that goes to prove that NASCAR and Butch's training have done him some good, anyway. His athleticism and speed have both improved. Luke's barely gotten his hands up in surrender when Bo is right there in his face.

The kiss, for all that it is full of anger and frustration, is still a kiss. Feels like fire, feels like a racing heartbeat, feels like want and need when they haven't touched in twenty-four hours. Close enough, for half that time, that their elbows should have knocked at least once, but they've kept a careful distance, a buffer of air between then out of respect for their uncle or their cousin, or just because they lacked the privacy to be comfortable around each other. Not that they're comfortable now – Luke figures they're going to leave bruises on each other's lips, Bo's hand on the back of his neck pulls at him in ways his body doesn't want to bend. He doesn't care, tilts his head and opens his mouth, feels the warmth of Bo's tongue against his and—

"Look out, Rodney." Jesse's shout, the loud slam of a screen door that would indicate that hollering at the rooster came before he was even fully outside. "I ain't got time to mess with you, I got to get to the barn." About as subtle as a four ton truck, the old man's announcing his approach. Bo pulls away from him with sudden violence.

Luke stumbles against the lack of resistance, catches his balance and smirks at the ground. But there's nothing about it that's funny.


	25. Chapter 25

He's hungry. Just about starved really, yesterday's meals – what of them he ate to begin with – were burned off in the nervous energy of the day.

So he sets to eating ( _prayer first, Bo_ ) because hell ( _say heck, Bo_ ) that's what a guest would do, right? Accept the food put in front of him, eat it with great relish, sit back and watch someone else do the dishes.

Listen to the awkward silence. Would a guest do that? Daisy must have spent herself on that runaway train of high speed chatter at last night's dinner and Jesse seems content to let his boys stew in words already said (and Bo knows his own half of that but still hasn't got the first idea what Jesse said to Luke). Luke's drowning himself in coffee, as if he were the one that was up half the night, acting like it's the first thing to touch his lips this morning, when the puffy redness there announces that it's not. No one has anything to say to him and maybe, being the guest, Bo's the one that's supposed to be talking. But he's too busy eating.

"Reckon," Jesse says, putting his coffee mug over to the side where Daisy won't clear it away. There's some kind of an unwritten rule about how no one but Jesse ever touches it. "The rains are done for a while." Old man toes or knees know such things.

Luke nods some sort of agreement and hands his plate up to Daisy. Meets her eyes for a second and no longer, but Bo can't help feeling that something passes between them. Some kind of silent conversation that he's not part of and it annoys him.

But he's a guest. He's supposed to be thankful to be spared the family drama, to be left out of semi-secret, meaningful looks.

"Gonna get warm soon." No need for achy joints to know that one. Spring comes to Hazzard every year in early March, which is only a month away. Planting's got to happen in the next few weeks, about the same time as the NASCAR season starts. It's the excuse he's always given himself for why Luke didn't come to see him race. "We got to get at them ditches."

Irrigation ditches, which winter isn't kind or gentle to. Cold rains wash dead leaves and stones into the channels for the rushing mud to catch on. All that mess has to get dug out, even if sometimes it would make sense to just start over fresh with new ditches. Bo remembers the process well. Hates it every bit as much as he did as a twelve-year-old with skinny arms and short breath.

"Yep," Luke agrees getting to his feet. "Reckon so."

"Let's go," Bo says, handing his plate off to Daisy and pushing against the surface of the table to stand next to Luke, same as he always has.

Or maybe it's only him that thinks he always has. Both Jesse and Luke turn to look at him for the first time since the meal began. Cocked up eyebrow from Luke asks him just what he thinks he's doing.

"What?" he asks. "There's work to be done, ain't there?"

"Bo," Jesse tries, shoving his chair back so he can get his rounded belly out from under the table.

"I ain't no guest," he snaps. "Let's go."

For two men that aren't exactly on the best of terms, Luke and Jesse share a look that pretty much shows they agree on one thing; Bo's nuts. The half-smirk on Luke's face is pretty close to the one he used to wear when Daisy would insist on coming along with them on a dangerous adventure. She wasn't wanted then and Bo might not be wanted now, but he doesn't care. He's not a guest and he's not leaving Jesse and Luke alone together to fight or conspire against him or, somehow, do both at once.

* * *

"Bo," he mumbles when their blades crash into each other yet again. Out of practice, they've lost the rhythm that used to make this sort of work go smoothly, even if it never was easy. Either that or Bo's an idiot that's pushing too hard, moving too fast. Trying to prove himself like he used to back in those days when they would test their strength against each other with wrestling matches. (And just see where that fine habit got them.)

Bo's eyes meet his long enough to ask him what he's complaining about. It's not Bo's fault that Luke's gotten so old or so slow. Or that he's doing a thorough job, really, when it's so much quicker to do it badly. Or that it's really kind of wet and miserable out here, with fog as thick as molasses. Making Bo's hair droop and curl when he's always hated it that way.

_Go somewhere else and dig_ , he halfway wants to say. And doesn't – it's not just that he wants Bo out of his way (though he does want that) but that he wants him back in the house. Away from Jesse, away from the mess, away from him because the taste of breakfast is covering up the taste of the kiss, but the want in his belly (and south of there as well) hasn't subsided in the least.

Shooing gesture from Bo's hand, telling Luke to move on, to pick another part of the ditch to work in, or maybe just to hush. To quit drawing attention to the two of them when really, the only other one out here is Jesse. And it's not like the old man would stop watching them even if their efforts were meshed together like a couple of finely tuned gears. Jesse's chin's been propped on the handle of his shovel even more than Bo's used to be when he was a clumsy and easily tired kid. Just looking at the two of them and maybe wondering how all the moral lessons and hard work of their upbringing could have so utterly failed to turn them into the men he wanted them to be.

Luke takes a few steps forward, but damn it, this is his ditch. His job to do and his boots and jeans alone that ought to be covered in mud. Instead, there's Bo with his expensive cowboy boots a ruined mess, arm wiping across his forehead to leave a trail of mud behind like war paint under the fall of his hair. Pausing long enough to look at his palm and then pounding his shovel into the mud again.

_("What is that?" Luke finally got around to asking. After the second time, after it'd been his hand wrapping around himself, spreading – what was it? – on himself._

_Pink spots flushing across Bo's cheeks, almost the same color as the bottle. Which Bo had been holding lightly, but now clenched into his fist. Like he could hide it, or had any chance of keeping it from Luke. Wearing nothing but skin with a sheen of sweat on top just to make things interesting, and suddenly it was a wrestling match tumbling across Bo's big bed. Giggles and panting as Bo tried to use his long reach to his advantage, and, when that didn't work, tried kissing him into forgetting. It was, Luke figured, a reasonably good distraction, one worth encouraging. Tasted of all the things they'd just done, felt as good as summer's rain on a hot day. So he kissed back, settling on top of Bo and letting his right hand, which had been reaching for the small bottle, stroke slowly down the length of his forearm to his elbow. Grabbed gentle hold there, his other arm holding his weight up off Bo's chest because breathing, he figured, was a critical part of living. And as mad as he'd been at Bo – for leaving him to come here to Mooresville, for kissing him first a month back – he wanted him to stay alive. To be just as warm and comfortable to lie against as he was right now._

_To move, just like that, a hand in Luke's hair, lazy knee coming up and leg resting against his hip. Lips roaming, scratching against the stubble of his cheek, heading for his ear. Stretch and shift, rubbing together on purpose and by mistake all at once and it felt good. Even if they'd already done this twice, even if he had some pulled muscles and otherwise sore (and sweaty) parts, it'd be nice to settle into this. To let it be nice and feel good, but—_

_Shrieking giggle in his ear, Bo pulling his arms down close to his body, every part of himself tensed and trying to defend all the pink skin that was exposed when Luke let his hand slip down to tickle just under the width of his ribcage._

" _Luke!" the complaint, all broken up in the middle by laughter and clipped at the end by an attempt to breathe. Bo's hand reached across his own body to try to pry Luke's fingers away from their torturous task, but he wasn't not strong enough, especially from that angle. "Co—" pushing and shoving but it was weakened by the way he gasped for breath. "Come on, Luke." Which in turn was weakened by his ridiculous effort to talk._

_The bottle got dropped somewhere in there; Luke could say that he stopped tickling Bo out of kindness and concern, but it would have been a lie. He could have said he quit because he was a full-grown adult and tickling was silly and that would have been closer to the truth. But the whole truth was that he couldn't tickle and grab that pink bottle at the same time, so he quit one to do the other. To find out what on earth the two of them had on them and inside them._

"' _For softer hands?'" he asked, figured it was rhetorical. Now that he'd read the bottle, they both knew what it contained._

_Sound from Bo that might have started life as an attempt to get a good, deep breath but ended loud enough to be a huff of a sigh. Annoyed or angry already for being laughed at or teased and it hadn't even happened yet._

" _Yeah, Luke, it's hand cream, all right?" Defensive when no one was asking him to be, but then again. Bo always had been the first one to make fun of all of Daisy's potions and lotions and all the time she spent making herself pretty, when the two of them were really the same. Bo was just as apt to stand in front of a mirror for hours making his hair fluff just exactly the right amount and not too much, smiling at himself, giving himself what he might have figured were smoldering looks. (But they were just cute, because Bo was always cute, or pretty, though he kept trying for rugged and handsome.) And maybe Luke had, once or twice, pointed out that for someone who poked so much fun at her, Bo was an awful lot like Daisy. "You just try driving six hundred laps around the Charlotte track and see if your hands don't blister and crack."_

" _All right," he answered, dropping the bottle back onto the bed somewhere. Because maybe he didn't know and maybe he did – Bo's hands always had been thin-skinned compared to his and Jesse's, and Luke had driven enough long-distance races to know that there wasn't a steering wheel that was ever likely to leave its imprint on his palms – but mostly because he reckoned that keeping Bo's hands from hurting him was just good practice. The boy needed to be able to grip a steering wheel with complete authority and without hesitation when the banks of curves loomed and the walls were solid concrete. And when the finish line waited for him to outdrive all those other guys and get there first._

_Besides, a little hand lotion wasn't anything to be fighting over. Not when they had far, far worse things to worry about.)_

Luke crosses the same distance again, back to Bo, and grabs him by the wrist. Turns his hand up to look at it and Jesse's still right there, not fifteen feet away, like a hot wind from the south. Staring at them hard enough to hurt but Luke ignores him. Or figures he does a reasonable job of acting like that's what he's doing, even if his mouth goes dry and his stomach twists.

He's not doing anything wrong, anyway. Just touching Bo when, honestly, he's touched Bo all his life, at least when Bo wasn't touching him first. Checking to see how badly his little cousin is hurt, just like Jesse taught him to when Bo was a spastic toddler who couldn't take two good steps in a row.

Bo snatches his hand back, same as he always has when he's pouting over minor injuries that he doesn't want to be picked at for complaining about. Takes a step away from Luke, like usual, and just about the time that Bo is supposed to glower (like usual) his eyes dart over to where Jesse stands. Like he's worried about what the old man thinks of a perfectly natural touch and what he sees on Jesse face doesn't ease his mind at all in that regard. Another step back, and Luke lets him do what he wants. Even if the mud is slick and those fancy boot soles don't have any traction at all, even if he slips and falls to his knee, shovel dropped and both hands down in the squelching mud to keep from falling flat on his face. Luke doesn't take a step forward, just looks at him, question in his eyes.

Bo's head drops and he gets to his feet without reaching out a hand for help. Shakes the mud off with exaggerated disgust, then picks up his shovel to get back to work.

As long as Jesse's watching, Bo's not willing to be touched.

"Go inside and wash that off," Luke tells him. Because his cousin's got a blister the size of a dime on his right palm. The damn fool shouldn't be out here risking injury to his hands and he sure as hell shouldn't be letting the damage he's already done get infected.

Big huffing sigh from Bo, but he turns around and walks off to do as he's been told. Only then does Jesse come to work alongside Luke in the lopsided rhythm that the two of them have adopted over the past three years.

* * *

Blisters must be a turn on. At least, after a time. First they're an annoyance, one that can't be spoken about throughout the rest of the morning. One that has to be loudly avoided into the afternoon by Luke grousing over taking the wheel of the General. (When who really asked him to, anyway? Not Bo, but then again he doesn't want to fight Luke over who is going to drive when he's had the car all to himself for most of the last three-and-a-half years. If Luke wants to drive him, he can drive him with Bo's blessing and without half the drama.) And by Luke grousing about dropping the work truck off at Bill Parker's farm on loan when they're just going to need to fetch it back tomorrow morning anyway. (And funny how Bo was allowed to drive the General over to Bill Parker's for the drop, but got shoved into the passenger seat after that.) And by Luke grousing about the screen they've been sent into town to pick up, the trees flying by impassively outside their windows.

Bo can't really find fault with that last complaint. It's the same dang routine every spring.

"We get sent into town," Luke narrates, even if Bo doesn't need him to. "We buy screen." It seems to be the one foolish dime their otherwise thrifty uncle is willing to spend. His overalls can wear through at the seat, the family can eat nothing more nutritious than beans for weeks, the barn's roof can be patched and patched again without ever being properly replaced. But the screen—

"We haul the screen back home and put it up," comes the further elaboration on a theme that Bo has known most of his life. The unspooling, fighting the stiff wire, the cutting (measure twice, cut once, Jesse's annual reminder), tacking it into place. "And the first March storm," Luke's voice rising toward some sort of crescendo over the flapping of air through their open windows, the roar of the car's engine echoing back off the bluff alongside the passenger's side edge of Timbertop Road. Rocks and dirt spitting out from under the wheels like expressions of Luke's frustration. "With thunder and lightning and any kind of wind at all," right hand comes off the steering wheel, thick finger pointing off at nowhere in particular, maybe west (or not, Bo's not half as good at knowing cardinal directions in the daylight as he is when the stars are out) from which the strongest winds blow. The top of the hill looms, with its high meadow lined by squat shrubs. "And that screen gets blown all to—"

Bo reaches across the car, against all the rules that he and Luke have lived by since he was thirteen and his older cousin clandestinely took him out on the south forty to teach him how to drive. Only one of them supposed to have their hands on the wheel at once, but the gap here is small and Bo doesn't have time for politeness. Besides, Luke's only got one hand on the wheel, and with Bo's left reaching across it's a sum total of two hands steering, which is, as years of NASCAR training have taught him, the ideal number of hands.

His thoughts aren't fully formed (though they're clear enough that he knows Luke's reached the ragged edge of whatever patience he has and Bo's not far behind) but he wants them off the road. Luke seems to concur, or at least not disagree; his foot finds the brake and brings them to a safe stop on the far side of the shrubs on level ground where almost no one ever goes. Before Bo can figure out what to do next, Luke's got the car shut down and is halfway over to the passenger side, hand gripping at the back of Bo's neck, head tilted to the side and kissing him deeply.

Blisters must be just that much of a turn on.

* * *

He misses being smart, really. Once upon about three months ago he was a reasonably smart man. (Further back than that, before the first time Bo rubbed against him, he was even smarter.) He could make reasonable decisions and learn lessons, but those days are gone and he's stuck with his one-track mind.

And his body, and they're both in agreement at the moment. Bo is here, and it's been all of thirty-some-odd (he used to be able to math, too, back when he was halfway smart) hours since they touched, at least with any intent. His one track mind and his body both pretty well agree that every part of him wants to touch every part of Bo. His hand's already doing its best at that, sliding down Bo's ribcage to his thigh, warm under the roughness of his barely-worn jeans. Fingers traveling around to get under Bo's knee and he tugs.

Squawk of protest as Bo finds himself pulled half sideways and sliding down, caught somewhere between sitting and lying down. He's too tall for the latter, his back curved like a turtle's shell to even come close and he gets over the indignity of it in record time, giggling and wrapping his long fingers around the back of Luke's head to pull him down and get back to the kissing. Hiss before Luke can get there, his dark hair scratching against the loose skin where Bo's palm has blistered and the damned fool shouldn't be doing heavy farm chores. Not when his hands are finely honed to gripping the steering wheel of a racing car instead of the ungainly handle of a mud-heavy shovel.

Annoyed huff of breath blows hot into Luke's face; that hand tightens in his hair, almost pulling and pushing all at once. "I'm fine, Luke."

No, he's not. "Shut up," he answers back. Presses his lips against Bo's to ensure that he's obeyed, if only this once. Not that it matters, there's a wiggle and a shift in the body underneath his that tries to get comfortable in a too-small space and Bo is not okay. It's there in the way that hand comes out of Luke's hair to drop lightly on his shoulder, trying to act like it's a perfectly natural movement and so what if it happens to get that tender part of Bo's flesh to a more comfortable resting spot. It's also there in how he's kissing, hard and halfway angry and Luke doesn't even know why.

Then again, the things Luke doesn't know could fill a whole set of encyclopedias. If he were still smart, maybe he'd write them all down.

What he does know is that there's no way for this to be anything more than what it is – frustrated kisses, huffs and sighs, the thrum in both their bodies from what they want but can't get their key parts close enough to do – unless they get out of the car. Unless they get down on the ground like their younger selves used to and wrestle the whole damned thing into submission. But they can't, they're expected back home. Soon, and it's not like they haven't ever gotten home later than expected before. But then again, most of those times they limped home on sore feet after losing the General to impoundment or slogged home wet after hiding under the surface of the creek to obscure their own tracks, or lopsidedly lurched in the door handcuffed to one another. Being gone for extra time now and not coming home black, blue or bloodied will just leave their kin to imagine what they've gotten up to – and be, sadly, quite accurate.

He tries to crawl closer, to lean more and somehow get the right parts of them in contact with one another, the sole of his boot braced against the door, his elbow on the opposite window and wrapped around Bo's shoulders to provide cushioning his knee—

His knee farting against the nylon of the driver's seat and kisses dissolve into giggles. Laughs and finally guffaws as he relocates all his limbs, figures out how to disentangle them from Bo, to get fully back into his own space, to settle into the driver's seat. To offer one last kiss – this one to Bo's wounded palm – then let go of Bo entirely and start the car. Because they can't do this here. Can't do this at the farmhouse or anywhere else in Hazzard that he can think of, not now that Jesse knows what it means if they disappear together for unsupervised hours.

Though he's the one that always figured that one of them needed to stay on the farm, now that everything has changed and they've decided to be together, wherever they end up, he's pretty sure that the only place they'll ever have a chance together is back in Mooresville. Where all the world is wide open and his cousin has a bright future.

But Luke can't be the one who makes that decision. That one's got to come from Bo.


	26. Chapter 26

He's wrapped up in Luke. And water, warm like a bath, but enough room for both of them. Swirling around him like a soft breeze, his arm looped loosely over Luke's shoulders, two strong arms around his waist. Smell of rain on fresh turned dirt, taste of home on Luke's lips. Mumbles between them that aren't clear enough to be words but he figures he knows what they mean, anyway. Quiet lap of water against their bodies as they shift, a bird in a tree off somewhere—

"Bo!"

A bird in a tree off somewhere shouting his name.

"Bo!"

Loudly.

"I'm up," he mumbles, because it's true. Sort of, his eyes are open, anyway, looking at the weak yellow of a late winter's sunrise as it filters in through the windows. Of a bedroom, and what's wrapped warmly around him is neither Luke nor water, but a heavy blanket. An old, ratty one from when he was a bony, scrawny kid that could curl up underneath on a cold night, fold it in half and it would still cover the whole of his body. Angled rays of the first sun catching in dust motes and he really needs to clean his room. Their room, his and Luke's and maybe he's not the only one who should be cleaning? Where's Luke, why isn't he here, and why is Jesse banging through the door like Bo's a sassy-mouthed twelve year old laying about lazily and in need of punishment?

"Bo!"

When in all actuality, he's a grown up now, one who doesn't even live in this room to clean it. And, now that he comes to think of it, what happened to him being a guest? Someone his uncle wouldn't yell at—

Well, that's all out the window, apparently, with the sunrise, with Luke. Everything good is outside, or at least not right here. Not in bed with him, even if he is sitting up now. Legs over the edge, feet solidly on the floor because he's been too tall to swing them freely since before puberty. Hands scrubbing through his hair, yawn forcing his mouth wide.

"Yeah, Uncle Jesse?"

Oh, that wasn't the right response. Should have thrown in a sir or three, maybe an apology, too, even if he doesn't know what for. Red face in stark contrast to white hair and beard, lips pulled sharply down at the corners, mouth open like Jesse's about to say (or shout) something. Or maybe just panting from the effort of being mad. Or to not hit him like an unruly child, maybe, even if the old man's body is slightly stooped forward toward Bo like a challenge.

"What?" he says, his own voice rising in alarm, because he's never seen one in progress before, but this, right here, might be a heart attack. "Where's Luke?" Because someone's going to need to have a plan for how they're going to perform CPR and drive to the hospital all at once.

"Where's Luke?" Jesse mimics right back at him, and maybe it's one of those slow heart attacks. The kind that allows for a lot of yelling first. "Where's Luke?" Some mockery and then a whipping before the redness of the old man's face takes over and his heart gives out. "You got the nerve," think fast Bo, think fast, "to ask me," not thinking fast enough, "where Luke is?"

Is he supposed to know? Did his cousin defy all logic (and his own sense of survival) and sneak in here in the night? He's not in his old twin bed, not in the closet or the corner of the floor or – Bo lifts his covers to look, because he would swear that only seconds ago he was safely wrapped up in Luke—

Something's getting thrown at him and he should have looked at Uncle Jesse's hands before this point. Should have seen whether they were balled up into mean, tight fists or gripped firmly around the width of a strap or just plain wide open and ready to slap him. Seems like they were too busy getting ready to throw a – sheet? Blanket? – at him to hit him. Blanket, definitely, old and faded yellow, thin and a little stiff with age. A straw falls out onto his knee, then slides to the floor, as he turns it over in his hands. Blue striped, thin cotton – pajama pants. Luke's, to be specific, and another straw. Right, the loft. Could it be only two mornings ago? Feels like a lot longer.

"Care to explain that?" Jesse inquires when Luke's pajama pants tumble out of the mess and hit the floor. Cute how Bo's pale blue ones are right underneath, now exposed to the world. Or just this small corner of it, the bedroom of his youth, himself, Uncle Jesse. Where is Luke? "I found them up in the loft of my barn."

Heart attack, and it might just be Bo that's having one. The thumping in his ears, the fluttering in his chest. Daisy's shoes click quietly somewhere beyond the doorway of his room, on the other side of Jesse. Somewhere out there, Luke's hiding, or maybe he's just plain run off. Out to the hills where the burnt-out, wizened moonshiners mumble nonsense in their crumbling shacks, and Luke's probably cackling with them at the mess he's left behind down here in the valley. It'll be one of those tall tales that gets passed down until it becomes legend. The curious death of Bo Duke.

Jesse's barn – because the barn belongs to the whole family until someone does something wrong in there. Why were you boys jumping off the loft in my barn, scaring my livestock? Echoes of old lectures in his head and he idly wonders what ever happened to him being a guest now? The kind who can't be expected to do work, and certainly can't be whipped.

"Jesse," he starts, tries to think of anything at all useful. Drags his tongue across his lips, but it's about as dry as sandpaper, and no amount of licking is going to get it out of talking anyway. "Those have been up there since before me and Luke told you about us."

Wrong answer; so much for thinking fast. Or at all, really, seemed like a good set of words before he said them. Now that they're out and hanging in the otherwise still room, he'd like to take them back.

"Bo," makes it clear, in case he hasn't figured it out for himself, that he's a damned fool. That he's making excuses, but it's really not fair. If the old man would give him time to wake up (and time to find Luke – where the hell is he and why did he leave their clothes and blankets where they could be found? His hands loosen as though by letting go of the evidence he holds, he can disguise his guilt. But they're soft and lightweight, they just lie there accusingly in his lap. All, that is, except for the squeeze bottle of hand lotion that rolls out and hits the floor like a town gossip in the middle of a crowd with a juicy tale to tell. "You boys," his uncle's voice booms. "You ain't any smarter than them goats out there," broad arm swinging out to the right to point in the general direction of the farmyard. "They don't know no better than to do their business wherever they happen to stand, but you boys was raised better than that." Such a quiet click of heels from the kitchen; Daisy going about whatever kind of breakfast-making she can manage when there's a tornado ripping up the bedroom not fifteen feet away. "And smarter. You's supposed to know better than to—"

Roar of an engine outside stops Jesse short as they both cock their ears toward the sound. Listening for a siren or a crash, for silly nonsense mumblings about the deaths of ten ordinary sheriffs. But there's nothing of consequence, just the motor coughing and dying, a door slamming roughly, chickens discussing the whole event in their casual chicken way. Boot heels on the porch, creak of the front door opening and—

"Smells good, Daisy." Luke, home again, which means he must have gone off to pick up the work truck from Bill Parker, probably on foot which means he must have slunk out of here a good hour ago. Leaving the chores for Bo, but Jesse got up first, of course he did. It's his barn and his farm and Bo's just a guest who can't be trusted with the simplest of tasks. "When's it going to be ready?"

Quiet mumblings from Daisy, probably telling Luke to run for it now while he still has the chance.

"Get dressed," Jesse orders, thick finger pointing right at Bo's naked chest like it can shoot a bullet of shame into him. For what he's not wearing now and wasn't wearing when he and Luke used the blanket covering his lap for far better purposes. "And get yourself decent. And then you come to my breakfast table and done you dare," voice rising enough that whatever quiet discussion had been happening comes to a halt as Luke and Daisy tune in just in time to catch the end of the tirade. "Don't you dare miss grace. You best be there when I'm talking to the Lord."

Sure thing. Best to make is easy for the old man to explain exactly where the lightning bolts are supposed to strike.

* * *

The blessing, for which neither he nor Bo have dared to be late (though the way Bo's leg is jiggling under the table indicates that he'd rather have run off than obey orders to be in here now), is mercifully simple and quick. Glowers from under whitened eyebrows make it clear that no more words are to be said now. And furthermore that eating had better commence immediately.

Bo seems to have learned something in the last forty-eight hours. Nothing big, nothing that would take any brains at all or that everyone wouldn't have assumed he knew all along – just that, after grace, when you're expecting bad things to happen, you eat. Quietly, carefully and with no urge to draw attention to yourself. Daisy seems to have grasped the skill as well, and Luke's had it mastered since he was a kid.

Not that it matters. Jesse's stewing up there at the head of the table, and soon enough, they're all going to know what's on his mind. So are the goats and the chickens and even Maudine. It's times like this that he's always been grateful that the nearest human ears live a good mile away.

"Eat," Uncle Jesse says, and Bo's elbow comes over to poke him. Must be him the old man's talking to, and it's silly, really. A man has to be allowed to take a break from choking down his breakfast to think, or maybe to glance at his girl cousin in hopes that she can more skillfully extricate herself from the mess this time than she did two days ago.

"Yes, sir," he mumbles, gets looked at funny by his younger cousins for being so respectful, but it's not like he's never called his Uncle Jesse 'sir' before. He just saves it for special occasions and whatever the old man's worked up at Bo for right now, he reckons it's probably pretty special.

He goes back to his forkfuls of fried egg that already taste like indigestion, his toast and some manner of potato substance that he knows was cooked with shaking fingers, because he watched them shake. Wondered why until the booming came from the back of the house, shouted instructions at Bo and if he still doesn't know the why, he does know that both of his cousins are upset. He'd like to sling an arm around each like he used to when they were kids and someone bigger and meaner picked on them, but this isn't the schoolyard and it isn't some outsider they're pitted against. It's Jesse, so all Luke can do is make a show of not being concerned. Of eating with casual speed until the food's all gone and all that's left is the yelling.

He wipes his hands on his napkin and places it next to his plate, folds his hands under his chin and waits for it. Endures a withering look from Jesse about his elbows being on the table, but it keeps the old man from noticing the way Bo's hands are rubbing up and down against the denim of his jeans. A cleaning motion or nerves, it's hard to tell (probably both) and he doesn't get to do it twice before Jesse clears his throat. If Daisy was planning to escape, she took too long to think about it. Once the throat gets cleared no one goes anywhere until the yelling's done.

"I don't suppose," Jesse starts and it's quiet. Reasonable. Far worse than hollering straight out would have been. Now they're going to have to listen and respond rationally instead of cowering (Bo and Daisy) and nodding (again, Bo and Daisy) and making logical counterpoints. (That part always falls to him. Bo grumbles that it's sassing at the time it happens, but he gets upset later if Luke doesn't try to negotiate them some wiggle room, so he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. If he's going to be damned, he might as well have his say along the way.) "You boys have made up your minds about whether you're going to stay on the NASCAR circuit or not."

Daisy gasps at that. Maybe, in all the stress and silence, they never got around to telling her that Luke has a pending job offer and a chance to escape probation. Or maybe they left out the part where Bo's considering coming home. Maybe their relationship has been something she figured she was done dealing with, or would be once they got over this hurdle with Jesse. Maybe she's been thinking Bo would go back to Mooresville and Luke would stay here with occasional conjugal visits to the north. Trips she could mostly ignore or just not think about, but now she's realizing. This relationship that she helped to put together, it's not going away. Whether it progresses here in Hazzard or up there in Mooresville, her life is going to be impacted by it.

Bo's looking at him like Luke's supposed to be doing their talking for them. Old habits of childhood that die hard, but this is not Luke's decision to make.

"No, sir," Bo finally says. "We ain't."

"Well," Jesse says, pushing his plate back with a muffled rattle that Daisy's favorite red and white tablecloth mostly absorbs. Picnic colors to brighten the room but right about now the print mocks them with memories of happy afternoons in the farmyard, years ago. Before Daisy got married to the wrong guy, before Bo left. Before it mattered to anyone but Bo and Luke what the two Duke boys got up to in the hidden corners of their own property. "I can't tell you what to do when you ain't in Hazzard. But I reckon what I'm about to say is just plain wisdom and you'd do best to listen to it no matter where you are." Eyes settling on Luke's and he half wishes he had the strength to force them to stay there, but they move on to Bo. "Y'all are a pair of damned fools."

Luke unfolds his hands to push his own plate back with a greater rattle than Jesse's made. Maybe it's insolence, maybe he just figures that all that needs to be said has been said. He and Bo are fools. Lecture over, point made, no need to go on with the moralizing part of it.

Bo doesn't seem to agree. Or maybe just thinks Luke should be more respectful. The boy's been gone for more than three years and he was barely twenty when he left. Could be he's still looking at Jesse through the eyes of a kid and he figures the old man is always right or at least knows better than they do. Whatever's going on in that blonde brain of Bo's, his eyes are wide, pleading with Luke to just behave himself, to be quiet and listen like a good little boy.

Fine. He'll listen. But only hard enough to find the holes in what Jesse's about to say, to point them out to Bo, to make them bigger.

"You done?" Jesse asks him, so he opens his hands in a wide gesture. _Go on. Keep telling me what a fool I am. Please, I've been waiting all my life to hear it._

Maybe he's looking to be the lightning rod that takes all the voltage and heat that's cracking around the table. Then again, maybe he just doesn't like coming home from a morning that started with a cold walk in the dark followed by a bumpy ride back in a work truck that should never have been lent on such short terms anyway, to find one cousin trembling in the kitchen while the other one is getting screamed at in the bedroom. Maybe he's upset by the things he missed, the yelling he couldn't stop, the protecting he couldn't quite manage to accomplish.

"Reckon so," he says. Tries to be a little contrite, at least. Must not succeed, because Bo's shoulders never get any less tense and Daisy's eyes, when he finally looks across the table to see them, are about as big and round as the saucer that his coffee cup sits on.

"All right, then." Jesse, at least, seems to think his words are genuine. Or at least figures that the best way to deal with Luke is to mostly ignore him. "Y'all are fools and I know you wasn't nothing but kids when this—" hesitation there as Jesse tries to decide what name to put on it. Caught between _relationship_ and _aberration_ , or maybe some other words that only old, morally upright men can think up. He settles for waving a hand in the air, loosely gesturing between them. "Got started. And I figure you was entitled to being fools then; there ain't no youngster that ain't been a fool from time to time."

"Uncle Jesse," Bo interrupts, saving Luke the trouble. Or causing it. Maybe it wouldn't do any good to point out that most of the times that Luke wants to hit Bo, it's for his own good. To shut him up before he gets himself in trouble, or at least before he makes all of Luke's efforts to draw the attention to himself instead of his younger cousin moot. "I ain't a fool for how I feel about Luke." Hands half curled on the table in front of him like they're thinking of balling themselves into fists.

"Of course you ain't," Uncle Jesse assures him, and he's sincere about it, too. No sarcastic rise to his voice, no lift of a skeptical eyebrow. For all his urges to save Bo from himself, Luke ought to have learned somewhere along the line that Jesse's youngest gets special dispensation to be just as disrespectful and disruptive as he wants to be. "Ain't nobody able to control how they feel. It's what you do about it that makes you a fool. Now, I reckon you boys tried to do the right thing." A hand up to stay any more comments, because even if Bo's allowed to say whatever he wants, Jesse doesn't want him to do it right now. Not when he's clearly got a speech that he's been planning out during the time the rest of them spent chewing over their eggs. And maybe, if he ever gets to the point, Luke will be able to figure out what the heck it's all about. "You tried to live separate and while I ain't ever one to say breaking up a family is a good thing, I know why you done it. And I reckon you had some help in deciding to get back together." Dark eyes try to meet Daisy's but they can't, not when she studying the cheerful pattern of her tablecloth. Maybe thinking about the table underneath with all its scars from past meals, maybe wondering, just like Luke is, how it is that Jesse figured out that she had any role at all in this.

"We decided that all on our own," Luke tries. Gets ignored, or at least there's no verbal reply, though at least Jesse's eyes come off Daisy. A quick look up at the ceiling like he's asking for patience when he's got so many unruly kids to deal with, and then he starts talking again.

"I don't figure there's nothing I can do to change your minds." Bo shifts restlessly; he's getting ready to say something again. To interrupt and slow this thing down, when really, its best just to let it runs its course. The two of them may not like what Jesse's about to say, but there's not going to be any stopping him, so they might as well get it over with.

It would be easier, maybe, if either of them had been respectful enough to put their hands into their lap for this discussion. But they didn't, so Luke reaches over and puts his right one over Bo's left. No so much holding it as covering it, flattening it out of the fist it halfway wants to become. His heart pounding in his ears as he does it, trying to figure out whether to bring his hand back to his own side of the invisible line between them, how he could do it without drawing ever more attention to himself when all of the other people in the room are already staring at him like he's nuts. In the end, he leaves it where it lies. Seems safest, at this point.

"But you got to be smart about this, because our lives are hard enough already without this," Jesse growls. "You got to remember who you are and how you was raised." Luke pokes his middle and ring fingers into the curl of Bo's palm. Strokes lightly into the warmth there, feels the hand tighten around his in some sort of instinct. To stop the tickle or to hold on, he doesn't know and it doesn't matter. He and Bo are holding hands at their uncle's kitchen table, and he's not sure his heart – or his ears – will survive the ordeal. "And where you are." Jesse's heart might not survive it, either. "Your actions have consequences, and you need to remember that."

"Yes, sir," Bo squeaks out. Because he may not always be as well-behaved and quiet as he should, but in the end, Bo is a good boy. One who doesn't like to upset anyone, one who prefers that everyone is happy. Even if the task is impossible to manage, most days.

But there's no point in being agreeable now, when they've only begun to dance around the surface of this thing. All they know at this point is what they could have guessed on their own, what Jesse has already made perfectly clear: he doesn't approve. That much got discussed forty-eight hours ago. There's something more, some other reason that they're all sitting here at this table in this moment that's about as comfortable as being smothered in quicksand.

"What else was it you wanted to say, Uncle Jesse?" That big old head snaps up at that one, white eyebrows dangerously low over glaring eyes. Fist on the table tightening and Luke figures he was plenty respectful in how he asked. He was just trying to move the conversation along past where it had gotten stuck, really. Being helpful, even if Jesse reckons that what he did was a lot more like sassing.

"You," Jesse says and it's funny how Luke would swear he can actually smell the fire that's burning inside his uncle. Stronger than any fire they ever lit under a still, but then again, they used to burn only ash wood in those days. What's aflame inside of Jesse is a lot more volatile. "Need to make sure don't nobody ever find out what you're doing. You know that half of Hazzard would skin you for it."

Luke's got no real answer to that one. Maybe because he's always known it to be true. Seems to come as a surprise to Bo, though, who frees his hand from Luke's and pushes himself back from the table. Maybe he means to stand up and march out or otherwise protest that statement, but he never gets that far.

"Cooter wouldn't," is the extent of his dispute, petulant as a four-year-old. "Enos neither."

"No," their uncle says, just as stern as a man can be when he's agreeing. "They might not, but do you figure they'd ever look at you the same? You reckon they'd invite you over for them late night card games that go on into morning, if they knew? You figure Cooter'd want to share his beer and doughnuts with you? And you can forget skinny-dipping. Which I reckon you boys done more times that I know about." Yep, they sure did. If it was a little warmer, they'd most likely be doing it now. "And then there's the law. You boys know how they like to come busting in here without no warning at all. You boys can't go getting caught by them."

"We ain't got no intentions of letting Rosco or Boss or Enos find out nothing," Luke informs him. Because Bo's right, Enos wouldn't skin them. He might not even tell Rosco about them if he could justify it in his own head as none of anyone's business. But the poor deputy would be torn between his sworn duty to uphold the law – which calls what he and Bo do illegal – and his loyalty to lifelong friends. It wouldn't be fair to tear him in two like that.

Bo scrapes his chair forward again, his left hand trying to rest casually on the table, but it can't. Not when it's so close to Luke's, when it looks like it would like to be held again, but it's not quite brave enough to get that close. Just fingertips barely ghosting against the fatty edge of Luke's palm. Daisy's still memorizing all the stripes and squares of the tablecloth; she probably never noticed that her cousins were touching each other in the first place or that they ever stopped. But Jesse's not made any happier by the touch, no matter how miniscule.

"Well then you'd better be a lot more careful." Fat finger pointing at their hands, but that's nothing new. Bo has stood close enough to him to drape an arm across his shoulders since the two of them were half this tall. "This morning I found your mess up in the barn." Ah, so that's what this is about. "Damn fools. Left your business right up there where Rosco or Boss or anyone could have found it."

Daisy's head comes up at that one, looking from one to the other of her cousins with something approaching fascination.

"Shoot," Luke says, and he really ought to be meeting Jesse's eyes now, but he can't stop looking at Daisy. Her head's tipped to the side, eyes slightly squinted like she's thinking extra-hard. "Rosco could stare at them blankets and pajamas," Daisy's eyes pop wide – at least she no longer has to wonder, "all day and never figure out that it meant that me and Bo—"

"He ain't got to figure it out," Jesse snaps. Not yelling; if he was, it would be a bluff. Meant to scare them into behaving, but this is something else. A hiss, one that warns them that his bite is so much more poisonous than his bark. "He's just got to go tell J.D. And J.D. ain't got to figure it out right away neither, but he'll have Rosco and Enos watching you like a pair of hawks. And if they see as little as that," a gesture and a nose wrinkle about the location of their hands, "they're going to have you figured out. And you'd best start remembering that you're on probation. They'd have you in jail before you could count to three."

Bo sucks in a shaky breath. It's been close to an hour now since Jesse first started hollering at him back in the bedroom. All this time of being out of sorts and no end to it in sight when all Bo wants is for everyone to find a way to get along. To be harmonious where all is cacophony.

Luke takes his hand, even if it's entirely the wrong thing to do.

"Jesse," he says, his voice steady. Logical and perfectly calm. "We kept it from Rosco this long. Heck, we kept it from you this long. You didn't even suspect."

"Well then," Jesse answers back, just as steadily. Or maybe it's more like firmly. "You just keep doing like you was before, then. You keep it from Rosco, you keep it from Boss, and you keep it from me and Daisy, too. If you're bound and determined to be like _that_ with each other," damns them even if nothing before this has, "I ain't going to tell you that you got to stop. But you make sure that I don't ever find no evidence – of any kind – that you're doing _that_ again."

Well. Mooresville's looking more and more attractive all the time.

* * *

Bo wonders, idly, where taking their shirts off would rank on the scale of things they can't do in the name of being careful, of making sure there's no evidence of their relationship for Boss or Rosco or Jesse to stumble onto. Not that it matters a whole lot when the air's still February-cold and Luke's not about to pause in his work long enough to breathe, much less strip off articles of clothing.

Maudine nickers from her stall; the goats answer her. Chickens making a nuisance of themselves at Luke's feet and the whole barn might just be laughing at the two of them, but Luke doesn't even notice. He's too busy putting his whole mind and body into the task, working up a sweat that shines on his face and makes Bo think about what it must look like on his shoulders now, his belly.

"Luke," he says, because they're alone. For a few seconds at least, while his cousin's still in the barn with him. But that part only lasts for a fraction of a minute at a time, because his cousin's like a metronome. Ticking into the darkness of the barn to heft a bale of hay, then ticking back out to toss it onto the work truck. Because it's what they said they would do yesterday, because Mr. Hnederson down the lane needs some hay and the Duke are from good stock that share what they have and offer up free labor to do it, too.

"What?" gets mumbled back at him, but it's just routine. He probably doesn't even realize he's done it, because he just bends over like he has a dozen times before, gets a good grip on the baling twine and lifts another bundle of hay. Carries it out with a grunt and that's about as communicative as Luke Duke gets.

Bo should be helping him. And he is, sort of. It's not his fault that Luke likes to show off his strength and agility by hauling three times as much as any normal man would. Bo could lift up a bale of hay and take it to the truck, but that would only make Luke have to increase his speed to prove his superior skill. And if he did that, he might hurt himself, so really, Bo's being about as helpful as he can by standing right where he is, one foot on the lowest rung of the ladder up to the loft, elbow draped casually over a higher rung. Very studiously looking straight ahead, never letting his eyes rise to where Jesse found incriminating evidence. He'd just as soon not dwell on the way his uncle railed against him and Luke this morning.

He'd rather be off somewhere, away from home. Cruising over the dust of roads that are older than any of them, hooking around fields and winding up hills, following streams as they meander across the county in their lazy way. Just his foot pressing down, the possessive growl of the General as he claims the center of the road, and Luke in his ear giving him directions to places he's known how to get to since he was no taller than one of the bales Luke's hauling – driving is how he shakes off misery.

Whereas Luke likes to wallow in it. Or just stick by home after he's been scolded, to work hard and maybe sweat takes his mind off of things he doesn't like to think about. But more likely, he just wants to show Jesse that he's not affected, that he's not cowed by being yelled at and scolded like an disobedient brat.

"What?" he gets asked again, a little louder, with more of a growl. Luke's back and lifting his next bale.

What? That's a good question. What, exactly does he expect Luke to do? Go storming out of the barn with him, tell Jesse that he doesn't feel like working and he's going for a drive? Shoot, if that's what he wants, he should have stuck with Diane Benson after all. She wouldn't have thought twice about sassing Jesse and shirking responsibilities.

But he didn't stay with Diane and he's not sorry about that. She didn't love him or even like him all that much. He was just the best driver to come into her world in a long time. She would have dropped him like a hot coal if she could have found someone better (though she never would have, the intent would have been there anyway). Unlike Luke who has stuck by his side through thick and thin, who made sure that Diane's carnival didn't kill him. Who has taken punches and punishments in the name of protecting him.

"What?" one more time and Luke's getting testy. Yeah, it's been that kind of a day already and it isn't even lunch time.

"You about done there?" Bo asks him.

Luke snorts at him. "Come on," he says. "You grab that bale over there and then we'll take this load over to the Henderson place."

* * *

Roads have edges, the far sides of ditches are lined with bushes. A true moonshine runner doesn't try to, as Cooter always advises, keep his car between the ditches. He bumps roughshod over them until he's on the far side of a barrier where no sane driver would follow him.

And what is a work truck if not a big car? With a loose suspension that just about puts Bo's head through the roof when Luke pulls them off road, but it's all for a good cause. One that he'll get forgiven for, once Bo quits clinging to the door handle with all his might.

Bushes part way to admit them like they always have, but not as many branches spring back into place as would if they were driving the General. Work trucks are not particularly aerodynamic, nor are they low to the ground. The bush line is not far enough to go in such a large vehicle, so he follows an old moonshine trail that's so grown up it might as well be a deer path, until he sees water. A wide place in Dobson's Creek that's not quite a pond, but it provides him with a clear line of sight in front while the trees he passed through on the way in here provide coverage to the back.

( _You need to make sure don't nobody ever find out what you're doing_.)

Jesse's words echoing through his head like the drone of the world's most annoying mosquito. They're nothing he wants to be thinking about right now, but they are unfortunately true. He and Bo need not to get caught. And they won't, because this little bit of nowhere is plenty safe. Still, Luke takes a good look around him before shutting down the engine then reaching across the bench seat to pull Bo toward him.

A kiss, because a hug would be too simple. Too honest, it would feel too much like comfort. Like he's taking care of Bo the same as he always has when his cousin's been hurt or upset and those old days are gone. Nothing they do will ever look innocent to the eyes of their uncle again – even this detour off of Dobson's Hollow Road on their way back home from the Henderson place will be suspect, Jesse will wonder at the delay. It might as well be exactly what it looks like.

Still, his arms are around Bo, same as in a hug, Bo's hands heavy and warm, pressing into his back. Blonde head tipping to the side, tongue finding his. Pulling him as close as he can figure out how when they're sitting in a truck, the steering wheel grating along Luke's ribcage, a console and stick shift between them. Not that Bo cares about any of that, his arms wrapped around Luke tight as a straitjacket, pulling on him hard enough to prove that he was plenty capable of lifting his share of hay bales this morning. Hands rubbing up and down his back, explaining what he wants with a rhythm that their bodies know all too well.

A hug, life would be a heck of a lot easier if he could have just offered Bo a hug _._

( _Our lives are hard enough already without this._ )

If the touch could have been enough just like that, but it's not. And they can't do this now, they can't do this here. The hand cream – Lord only knows what happened to that after Jesse's little discovery this morning, and while Luke would like to say he left it up in the loft for safekeeping the truth is he never thought to go back up after it. Even if they did have everything they needed for all Bo wants to do, there's the fact of time. They've already been gone too long, and showing up an hour late with sweat drying in their hair and their clothes askew will do nothing positive for Jesse's attitude toward them and ultimately nothing positive for Bo's mood.

He pulls back, halfway brings Bo with him when the fool doesn't let go. Another bump on that blonde head when it bangs into the roof; insult gets added to that injury when his elbow knocks into the horn and sets it off with a piercing blast and Bo's crawling off him, eyes popping like a deer at the snapping of a twig. Heart racing when Luke puts a hand to his chest and settles him back into his own seat. Sighs and lets that hand slide up to squeeze Bo's shoulder.

"You given any thought to what you're going to say to Doug Reed?" Bo's eyes don't get any less startled and maybe Doug Reed is the last person on his mind when he's been scolded by the man he's looked up to all his life, then shoved away by the man whose pants he was perfectly willing to crawl into. "We got to go back up there and give them our decision, Bo." But it makes perfect sense to Luke, the things that they wouldn't have to stop themselves from doing if they had their own space to retreat to.

All the same, it's Bo's decision whether he wants to be a terrible farmer or a top-notch and famous driver for the rest of his life. Luke's not going to tell him what to do.

"That's four days away, Luke." True enough, they took a week's vacation and they are not even halfway through it, even if each day has dragged out enough to be a month. Bo's still got four days to make up his mind.

Four days, and he wonders if Bo expects to repair the rift between them and Jesse that fast. Sure, this is Hazzard, the place where, together, he and Bo have solved major crimes in half a day before. But they haven't uprooted mountains by their foundations and moved them from here to there. And that, Luke knows, is about what it would take to change Jesse's mind.

"All right," he answers, pulls his hand away from Bo and turns in his seat to restart the truck. If they're going to remedy this catastrophe, they need to be back at the farm, not off in the woods, kissing.


	27. Chapter 27

He is, he has known since he was shorter than the kitchen table, pretty. Used to be a problem, used to be at the core of fat lips and bloody noses, leading to sore hind ends and tears. Luke always got more than his share of the whippings over it, even if he never was around at the beginning of the fights. Off somewhere playing his own games, beating the other boys at baseball or marbles, but Luke would show up when things got loud. After Dobro or Hughie or even Enos that one time (but that was on a dare and he's apologized for it at least once a year ever since) called Bo _pretty as a girl_ or offered up the opinion that his aunt ought to start putting him into dresses, and the hollering would start. Luke would appear and tell them all to knock it off, but it never did stop there. One more word got said by someone – almost didn't matter who it was – and Bo would go flying at them, fists first. The minute Bo took his first punch, some complaint would come mumbling out of Luke's mouth and it would be an all-out brawl from there.

Most times he and Luke won, but when they got home, the dirt on their knees and bruises on their faces told the story. That led to the whippings, the meals eaten standing up, nights spent sleeping on bellies. The next day being dragged from one house to another, like Halloween in reverse, offering up apologies and, in extreme cases, Aunt Lavinia's pies. It was all be very peaceful while the adults were around to keep everyone's tongue civil, but it would start up again in a week, a month.

Until he hit twelve and realized pretty wasn't so bad. At least the girls didn't think so and those same girls wouldn't give Dobro or Hughie the time of day. He started smiling instead of fighting when that word got attributed to him, and the fights stopped cold.

Ever since then he's known what he is and what makes his life easier – he's pretty. He gets more sponsorship offers than drivers who have been in the circuit decades longer than him because of it, and he has no real fear of anyone beating him out for the senior driver position on the Reed team. Not when he can earn money for the team even without having to get into his car. The fact that he's also the best driver out there is just the icing on a very pretty cake.

His pretty is all natural, with a little help in the form of extra time in front of the mirror getting his hair to settle softly around his face. But his pretty does rely on him getting enough sleep and being happy enough to smile. Both of those things have been in short supply, lately.

Already it's the fourth night that he and Luke have spent here in Hazzard and he hasn't gotten anything like a decent night's sleep since they arrived. It's enough to make a man feel ugly, even if the worst that actually happens is the discoloration under his eyes. (He wonders, idly, what would happen if he asked to borrow some of Daisy's makeup. He reckons if he did, Jesse'd holler at him twice as loud as he did this morning, and Daisy might just faint. Luke would just snicker and tell him to quit worrying about how he looks. He reckons he can take that advice before it's ever offered, especially if it'll keep the old man from getting riled all over again.)

Telling time by the stars has never been his long suit and besides, there's a roof between him and the skies. It could be midnight or three in the morning – he doesn't know and it doesn't matter when the only thing he can say for sure is that he hasn't slept a wink since coming in here at around ten. Without Luke, of course, because they have to be careful. They have to make sure that no one knows what they do or even suspects, not even their family. Which was a lot easier before their family actually knew and shouldn't that knowing negate the silly rule that he and Luke are supposed to keep it hidden?

Maybe he's tired and maybe he can't think all that clearly. Maybe he wants to go to Luke badly enough that he's willing to take a whipping. (Maybe not – he's got his hand cream squirreled away into his duffel bag again and designs on using it as soon as he can figure out how, where and when. It would be a shame if his and Luke's backsides were too sore for extracurricular activities.) Luke should come to him or he could go to Luke or—

See, and this is the problem with not sleeping. There's just him and the dark, and they're not exactly easy companions. The dark's boring and not much of a conversationalist, leaving him with nothing to do but think. Which he's not exactly fond of, and besides, too much thinking slows a man down. Best just to get moving and stay moving no matter what.

So he gets moving. Up onto his feet and it's not like he has a vast array of choices as to where to go. Especially not after he opens the bedroom door to see light drifting across the living room from the overhead in the kitchen. Great, another midnight discussion with Jesse.

All the same, his uncle's friendlier than the dark, so he heads toward the kitchen anyway. Gets surprised to find Luke sitting there in old, gray sweats, staring off into space with a mug on the table in front of him.

* * *

There is, he figures, just the right amount of quiet. Still sites got it right – the stream letting out little burbles, the leaves stirring only to settle again. Moles and voles in search of a late night's snack, a fox padding over moss. The woods murmuring its little sounds, telling quiet tales of other critters that were awake and about and it was enough. After a day spent around din raised by Bo and Daisy, that kind of quiet always suited him just about perfectly.

And wasn't stifling, too thick and heavy, like that bedroom he built out of a porch. Too far from the rest of the house, too newly built out of a largely unused part of the house to have anything like memories or marks from past residents. Even the mouse holes got covered over by the new drywall and wainscoting, and the squirrels with their skittering feet never play on that section of the roof overheard. Just him and his breathing, slow and shallow, and it's too much quiet.

The kitchen isn't a whole lot better, though the hot water heater lets out a gurgle or two when he fills the coffeepot with water. Until his family starts to show up, like moths to the yellow glow of the overhead light. Jesse ambles by on his way to the bathroom, stopping just long enough to tell him to stay away from the coffee and get back to bed; they've still got irrigation ditches to clear out in the morning. Then the old man does his business and shuffles back to where he came from, leaving Luke to dump the water back into the sink. Not that he expects he'll be sleeping anytime soon, but he shouldn't waste the coffee grounds when he's not going to enjoy the drink – not after being told to stay clear of it.

But like dominoes, the rest of the house falls out of slumber. Daisy shows up yawning, thin blue blanket wrapped around her shoulders and held modestly closed by one hand, the other pushing her hair out of her face, then pointing vaguely at the empty coffee pot.

"I ain't made any," Luke admits, leaving out the part about why. Leaning against the counter in his old, grey sweats and wondering why Daisy would be so demure about her pajamas when she never has worried about what part of her was showing before. Then again, that almost-gone tan line around her fourth finger reminds him that she was married not all that long ago, and now she's on her way to being divorced. Living, for a couple of years, in a different house with a different man, and maybe it's changed her. Maybe she's lost some confidence in her own beauty and charms. (She's a fool if she has, and L.D.'s a dead man if Luke ever happens across him.) "But you can," he offers. After all, Uncle Jesse hasn't told her not to drink any and he'd never make her clean out a trench, either. She might just offer to do some digging anyway, and if she does, Jesse'll send her off to tinker with the tractor's engine. It's how he keeps her away from the heavy labor.

"Nah," the girl says, slumping her way into Jesse's chair at the head of the table. "I don't want to be up all night." Which explains her presence in the kitchen so well. Nothing like going into a lighted room and sitting in an uncomfortable chair to help you sleep.

Then again, maybe Luke can understand it. Her bedroom's probably too quiet, too, after a few years of sharing with L.D. (And there's a lie of thought that his mind doesn't want to pursue any further.) He sits in his own seat just to be close, wishes he's gotten as far as getting a mug out of the cupboard so his hands would have something to play with. For now he folds them in front of him, studying how his fingers fit together so neatly.

"You all right?" Daisy whispers, putting her hand over both of his. Cool to the touch like she always is; too much skin and bones and no fat to insulate it.

"Fine," he answers back, because he is. Nothing's really changed in his life over the last twenty-four hours, other than the awakening of the primal instinct inside of him to protect his cousins from the words that got said this morning. Which is silly because nothing that has already happened can be taken back or made to go away; they just have to live forward from here. "How about you? I ain't sure how Jesse," mumbled as quietly as he can because the oldster's still got a moonshiner's ears, able to pick up the crack of a twig under a revenuer's boot from a hundred yards away, "found out you knew about us. Or that you had any hand in it, but I figure I need to tell him tomorrow that wasn't none of this your fault." He should have done it today, but Bo was upset and taking care of him has always come first.

Her fragile-looking hand pats both of his, funny how it feels the same as Lavinia's used to all those years ago. Sweet, in a patronizing way that implies that small boys (and fully grown men) have a lot to learn. "It ain't your fault, Luke." Her hand falls away and she pushes against the table to stand. He reckons she's headed back off to bed, but she drops the blanket from her shoulders and drapes it over the back of Jesse's chair instead, then heads over to the refrigerator in just her frilly, baby doll nightie. Opens the door and, "I told him," she says into the cold air, her breath floating back out into the kitchen. She grabs the milk bottle and closes the door again with a slight shiver. Fool of a girl, dressed like it's a summer's day instead of a winter's night.

"What?" he snaps at her. Because the only thing dumber than the way she's dressed is her telling their uncle things that the old-timer never needed to know. Things that could only bring her trouble and she had to have known that Luke and Bo would have protected her secret until death.

"Shh," she answers back and he half wants to holler all the louder for being shushed like a noisy little boy at a church service. "I told him because I thought it would help, Luke."

"Help?" He may not like being told to shush, but he can see the value of keeping Jesse away from this conversation, so he keeps his voice low anyway. "How on earth was it going to—" Sometimes he wonders about the Duke line. How they have survived this long when, genetically speaking, at least some percentage of their ancestors had to be about as smart as Coltranes. Daisy must have inherited her logic skills from somewhere, and it would be easy to blame her mother, but Bo seems to suffer from the same affliction. Making weird decisions and then acting like they're perfectly reasonable – it's enough to leave a man speechless. He just shakes his head.

There's the quiet clunk of the bottle being set on the table, then that same slender hand that was trying to hold both of his a second ago swats him on the shoulder. For being a buzz saw or for being right – he's not sure which. She offers up a little snort and heads over to the cabinets.

"I figured I could explain how you two was miserable apart, and that you never would have been happy with Hannah," she clarifies as she pokes around until she comes out with the same small saucepan that Aunt Lavinia used to reheat soup in for the three of them back in the days when they'd come home from school for lunch. Daisy puts it on the stove, then turns around to pick up the milk again.

"Yeah? How did that work out?" he asks, gets rewarded with another snort. She twists the cap off the milk bottle and pours some into the pan.

"I reckon you can figure that out for yourself." The cap gets screwed back on, milk back in the fridge and the pan over to the stove.

"You all right?"

Flame on, a shrug, and, "It's just as well, Luke. I'd kind of had my fill of keeping secrets from him."

Yeah, he can understand that.

Kitchen drawer opens and shuts, then there's the dull scrape of a spoon on iron as Daisy stirs the milk she's heating. "I'll be fine. He ain't really mad; he figures I was protecting y'all. He just don't like it that it was him that I was protecting y'all from."

"I'm sorry, Daisy." All his life, he's said those words to her hundreds of times, probably. For little things and big ones, most often because he was compelled to by his uncle or aunt and in all those times, he's never meant it as much as he does right now. The girl's had troubles of her own all along; the last thing she's needed is to take on her stupid cousins' problems, too.

"It don't matter none. What's really important," she adds, before he can tell her that it does too matter and that she shouldn't take any other stupid measures to help him and Bo out. "Is whether you two are going back to NASCAR or not." A few dull thuds as she taps the spoon's handle against the lip of the pan.

Yeah, about that. He goes back to studying his hands.

"I ain't sure. I reckon that's up to Bo." Who is just the same as he ever has been. No head for planning, no need to decide anything in advance. Just take life as it comes and it was a cute quirk when he was four. Right about now, when Luke ought to be packing his jeans and negotiating with Boss, it's more like annoying.

Daisy digs one of the heavy ceramic mugs out of the cabinet, the ones she gave to Uncle Jesse the first year she was working at the Boar's Nest. They're not pretty, with their dull blue finish and oversized handles. But they do keep their contents nice and warm. If she's going to pour her milk into one of those, she's planning in being up for a while and taking her time drinking it.

Which is fine with him. He's not sorry to have company. But she needs to stop asking him questions that he's got no answers for.

"Ain't you got a preference?" She sticks her pinky into the milk in the pan, must decide it's not warm enough, because she moves the mug over to the side and turns the flame up again.

Of course he does. He has all along, from the time he came back from the Marines. His preference would have been for him and Bo not to get involved again, for them to have just enjoyed all the things they could have been to each other as cousins. Or for Bo not to have tried to leave with Diane Benson, for himself to have gotten a job on Cale Yarborough's team as a mechanic, because coming and going from that wouldn't have hurt him. For Bo to have stayed here in Hazzard after the offer from Doug Reed came, to have faced Jesse then. But now it's too late for him to have preferences. Bo's on the verge of living his lifelong dream, with a real chance to shine over the next few seasons of NASCAR.

"It don't matter what I want."

"Luke," she starts and it's funny how she manages to evoke Aunt Lavinia in doing it. Especially as she stands up there by the stove, one hand on her hip (that's barely clothed and that's the one thing that clearly distinguishes her from their departed aunt, who preferred flannel nightgowns that fell to the floor), the other stirring at warming milk. And shaking her head at silly boys who have no idea what they're talking about. "I reckon if that's the way you want to look at it, that's okay." How nice of her to give him her permission to be logical about this. "But you got to keep looking at it that way all the way through." The spoon gets laid stickily onto the stovetop, the flame turned off. No pinky test this time; the milk must have threatened to boil. "You can't," she asserts, like she knows anything at all. Like her string of relationships, ending in that disaster with L.D., has left her worldly and wise. (Then again, even when she was a six-year-old with a crush on her Sunday school teacher and a doll firmly planted under her arm, she doled out advice like she was worldly and wise.) "Go changing your mind later and getting upset because he made a decision you didn't like."

He has the strangest urge to stand up, even if he has no excuse to do it and no place else he plans to go right now. He just wants to break the spell of her being taller than him, of either one of them thinking she's the incarnation of Aunt Lavinia talking to a six-year-old version of him.

"Daisy," he says, instead of moving. Just to remind her of who she is and that he's never really taken her advice terribly seriously in his life.

"Now Luke," she says, putting the empty pan back on the stove and bringing the milk to the table. Setting it in front of him instead of her own chair. Standing next to him and doling out a pat to his shoulder, like a proper aunt-turned-mother would. "I know you make sacrifices for him. We all know it, heck, even Bo does. But you can't keep telling him that he can do what he wants, and saying he needs to make the best decision for him, and then resenting the decision he does make." She stoops then, just as he's looking up at her to refute her or tell her to mind her own business, she kisses his forehead. "Get some sleep, cousin," she commands, then walks over to her chair, picks up her blanket and flounces out of the kitchen and back into the darkness at the back of the house, her bedroom door closing with a whisper-quiet click.

He has no idea how long he's been glaring at the mug – with its contents that are as little wanted as Daisy's advice – when the floorboards creak again.

* * *

"Hey," Luke greets him quietly, eyebrows up like maybe he was expecting Bo to be someone else. Which works out perfectly because Bo was expecting Luke to be someone else. Probably that same someone else – Uncle Jesse.

"Everyone else sleeping?" he asks, gets a slight shrug of shoulders as his only answer. A second glance around the room tells him that at least, if they're not asleep, they're not in the kitchen. Not in the living room, either, Bo just came through there. Not likely to be out on the porch, what with it being February and all, and if they are out there, they've got frozen toes and other worse problems than what they are about to see. He steps right up behind Luke's chair, waiting for his cousin to tip his head up to see what he's doing. Then he bends at the waist to kiss those confused lips. "I've missed you," he mumbles, figures he's going to get eyes rolled at him, but instead there's a hand at the back of his neck, holding him in that awkward bent position, so that Luke can get another kiss, upside down and unsatisfying as it is.

Doesn't last long; Luke's tolerance for being silly never endures beyond the length of a giggle. Bo stands to his normal height, then takes the two steps to sit next to Luke same as he was this morning. Thinks about how close Luke came to holding his hand then, wonders just how much trauma it would take to get him to do it again. Affection from Luke is where his protective streak, his compassion and his guilt meet up. It's a careful mix, can turn volatile if the proportions are wrong. Bo figures two kisses are all he can ask for.

"What's that?" Well, two kisses and a mug of what looks like milk, anyway. Luke shoves it toward him.

"Warm milk. Daisy made it for me."

"Daisy?" She ought to know better than to bother. The only time Luke has ever liked warm milk is when it comes straight from the goat's teat.

"Yeah, she was in here earlier. I guess she couldn't sleep." Bo lets out a yawn to second that notion. Reaches across his chest and scratches his shoulder under the mottled tee shirt he's wearing that's got some Moorestown business logo stretched across the front. He doesn't even know whose; doesn't have to. Local businesses up there are just begging for NASCAR-affiliated guys to wear their logos around town, so shirts and hats show up in the garage by the dozens. All the guys pick out the ones they like, or the ones that halfway fit. There aren't too many tee shirts that are long enough forBo. "I thought she was making it for herself," Luke says of the milk.

"Mm," Bo agrees, picks up the mug and puts it to his lips. It's warm, but not hot; Daisy must have gone back to bed some time ago. He takes a deep swallow of the milk; it would be a shame if it went to waste. "Don't suppose I could convince you to come back to bed with me?" It's one of those jokes that's not at all funny.

Luke snorts to prove he doesn't think it's funny either. Puts his elbows on the table and looks off across the room at the stove, the refrigerator, the hot water heater – at nothing at all. "Reckon it's better if you stay up with me instead."

All right – beggars don't generally get choices, and he's pretty sure he's not going to sleep any more tonight anyway. He polishes off the milk, tipping the mug up high to get every drop – he's not a wasteful man, after all – then puts it down on the table in front of him. Luke's shoulder is hard, maybe even at little more so than usual, given the tension in the muscles, but Bo lays his head there anyway. Gets a snicker from Luke as he shuffles to get more comfortable – at least as comfortable as a hard chair in a chilly kitchen can be, and settles himself.

Which is why he's thick-headed come morning. Slow-moving, the shovel twice as heavy as it was two mornings ago when they last worked at clearing the irrigation ditches. Today might be a really good day to reassert his "guest" status. But then again, that would get him relegated to the house, with a glass of lemonade in his hand while Luke was out here working alone. Bo would rather be by Luke's side.

"Bo," enters the sludge in his brain; the tone indicates it's been said more than once. He lifts his head to follow the sound and there's Uncle Jesse, halfway between the house and the field they're working in. "Come on, boy, I need your help."

He nods his head, drops his shovel where it falls and starts trudging across the mud. He's going to need new boots, he reckons, and maybe it would be easier to just buy a new pair of jeans, rather than trying to get these clean. Though he reckons his kin would just about faint at that thought; they've gotten jeans so dirty that the only way to get them clean again was to scrub holes right through the knees. No matter, a patch to cover the holes and then the jeans would go right out into the mud again. New jeans are a once-a-year event in the Duke household and his family would be scandalized to know how many new pairs Bo has gone through since he went off to NASCAR where money comes easy and laundry goes into a machine that wrings and wrangles holes into clothes faster than washing by hand.

"Good luck," comes floating quietly over the distance he's crossed. Only then does he look back to see that Luke's stopped shoveling to watch him go, one eyebrow just a little higher than the other as he assesses what this nonsense is about.

Right, Bo should have been smarter than that. He's tired and he's out of practice, but he ought to have recognized Jesse's request for what it is. Not help with whatever it is he's brought back from town in the work truck that he drove off this morning, but time spent with Bo, separate from Luke. Oldest tactic in the book, it was how he used to figure out what the two of them had gotten up to and just how many of the neighbors' watermelons they'd swiped. He wishes, now, that he'd taken a moment back there with Luke to get their stories straight. Whatever their stories might be, because he's not even sure they've got any, other than the ones Jesse already knows. (Maybe he wishes that he'd taken a moment before walking away to say something to Luke, to touch him. Maybe he wishes that he and Luke could have stayed together just as they were in the kitchen overnight, close together for shared warmth, touching here and there without intent other than just to enjoy being next to each other.) He trudges on to his doom anyway. It's too late now for second thoughts.

"What did you want, Uncle Jesse?" he asks when he's gotten to where the work truck is parked crossways at the barn door, mud spread up out of its wheel wells to spatter the sides. He reckons he and Luke probably need to go after all the vehicles with a hose as soon as this mud dries out.

His uncle's got an armload of burlap-wrapped seed corn, must weigh forty pounds. His face is red from that much alone; Bo doesn't need him answering any questions after all. He trots over to the back to the truck and tries to take the bag from Jesse.

"I got this," comes the gruff-old-man-don't-mess-with-me instruction. "You get the rest of them."

The _rest of them_ looks to be another fifty or so; then again, it might be less. Hard to be objective when it's his back that's going to be lifting and hauling them. Into the depths of the barn where Jesse supervises the way he drops and stacks them with a dull thud, and otherwise just stays out of his way. His mind wouldn't have it any other way, but his back and arms reckon he could use a little help. When he's hauled in about ten of them and he's turning back for the eleventh, Jesse grabs him by the arm.

"Sit, boy. Rest. You ain't used to all this work."

It's one of those things he ought to bristle against, ought to tell his uncle he works plenty hard on the circuit, that he's just as capable of hauling seed as Luke is (and there's not a soul alive that's brave enough to tell Luke to sit and rest in the middle of a heavy task like this), that a little hard work isn't going to scare him off from wanting to move home.

But, quite honestly, the hay bale Jesse's pointing to looks comfortable, or at least more so than staying on his feet, so he sits. Watches his chest puff in and out and wonders when he got so out of breath.

"Bo," his uncle says, settling heavily onto a nearby bale. His denim coat is open, which goes to show he's exerted himself enough to get warm. The red cap comes off his head long enough for him to mop at whatever amount of sweat might have pooled under its brim, then gets plopped crookedly back into place. "I reckon I was hard on you yesterday morning."

There ought to be a rule about this. No one is allowed to start an awkward conversation when the person they're having it with is too out of breath to sprint back into action, claiming that work's more important than talking. Bo doesn't say anything, doesn't try to walk away, just slouches until his back hits the splintery wall behind him. His posture's no better than a little boy's, but that's fitting. It's what he feels like.

"It's okay," he says, about like he'd recite his times tables. It's just as ingrained. His uncle's trying to apologize; the least he can do is be gracious about it.

"Which don't mean I'm happy about you boys." Just in case he wanted to misconstrue this little apology. "I just don't reckon yelling at you is going to change your mind none."

Bo snorts, stares off at nothing, because it's a heck of a lot easier than looking his uncle in the eye right now. "If Luke ain't changed my mind over all these years, I don't expect anyone can."

That puts a hitch into Jesse's get along. The pause that follows is long enough that Bo gives up and lets his eyes glide over to get another look at his uncle. Still sitting there, bib of his overalls bulging out through his open jacket, mouth lax and eyebrows raised. He's going to say something, and Bo has no idea what. Which seems to be perfectly fine; Jesse's got no ideas either. The old man shakes himself, and the morbid curiosity that had been in his eyes quells.

"Bo," his tone is different now. Quieter, less stilted. Upward inflection instead of down; it's the beginning of one of his long speeches. Bo shifts on his bale to get a little more comfortable and lets his vision drift over to that same old nothing again. "Did I ever tell you about your parents?"

Bo's eyes track quickly back to Jesse. He looks tidy enough, his overalls are on straight with all the appropriate parts buttoned, his hair only as messy as it would naturally be working outside where the wind gets into it. His boots are on the right feet and he doesn't seem to be drooling, so he'd probably not losing his sense. So why would he ask Bo such a stupid question when they both know that just about every word that Bo has ever heard about his parents came from Jesse?

Meaty hand waving through the air in dismissal of whatever look Bo's face is wearing right now. "I mean about when they met."

"It was at the annual fall hootenanny in 1958," Bo recites with a shrug. Like the tales of moonshine runs in Model T Fords with revenuers in pressed black suits with matching ties driving primly behind in their bouncing jalopies, headlights wobbling in their sockets and throwing crazy shadows on switchback roads, Bo knows about his parents in a vague way. As though they came out of a book that starts with 'once upon a time' but never quite makes it to 'happily ever after.'

"Well, sort of," Jesse concurs. "That's where my younger brothers was introduced to a whole bunch of Chickasaw girl that came up for the celebration. Julia," that's his mom, "she was there but we ain't got no way to know for sure that Em," that's his dad, short for Emmet, which might just be the only name worse than Beauregard, "actually met her there."

"What?" he asks, because it's like having a childhood storybook read to him all over again, except that this time that Jack doesn't really chop down the giant beanstalk, so the giant comes down to Earth to pillage and plunder in revenge for all of Jack's thievery.

"Well, we figure they was introduced, because there was square dancing," and tradition insists upon formal introductions of all dancers at the start of any dance. Both of his parents were dancers like him, not wallflowers like Luke. He knows that. Or figures he does, but then he's always known that his parents met at the fall hootenanny of 1958 and married in the summer of 1959. So maybe he's not so knowledgeable after all. "So what we told you when you was a tyke, that was true." In a careful sort of a way. Then again, Bo's been known to be awfully particular in his own truth telling. "But them two didn't really meet until the Chickasaw Night Classic race in 1959. Your daddy won that, you know," Jesse adds, like is supposed to make him proud or happy or at least distract him from realizations.

"But that would have been in May!" he complains. As though saying it loudly and with a firm edge to his tone will make Jesse stop this nonsense where it turns out his parents were – he doesn't even know, not yet. "They was married on June sixth."

Or maybe they weren't. Maybe everything he's ever known was a lie, even if he's seen clippings from the Hazzard Gazette about his parents' wedding, maybe they're not real. Something Jesse had made up at some printer's in Capital City or Atlanta. But why would he do that?

"Wasn't they?"

"Of course they was," Jesse scolds, like he's just blasphemed the name of his own mother. "Three days after they met for real, Em come right into that kitchen yonder and told me an Lavinia and your Uncle Jack," Daisy's daddy, "that he planned to marry Miss Julia Henshaw the following Saturday. Which would make the wedding an even week after he met her. Now all of us in this house knew he was a fool," Jesse pauses there, frowns at himself. Maybe he figures it's in bad taste to call Bo's dead daddy a fool; maybe Bo would agree with that assessment. "But it fell to me, as the oldest and head of the clan since your granddaddy had gone on to his reward, to decide what to do about it." Jesse's right thumbnail starts tracking a line on his denim overalls, tracing something only he can see. From just about his knee to his mid-thigh, then back down. "I reckon I felt strongly about it. I told him there was no way he could know the girl in just a few days, and he'd be a dadburned idiot to go getting hitched before the two of them had even had their first fight. Not to mention he didn't even know her bloodlines."

The air in the barn is still, but there's a hiss like a wind blowing through. Slow movement to Bo's left as the top bag of seed steadily keels toward the floor of the barn until it falls with a thump.

"Leave it be," Jesse says when Bo shifts in that direction. Same tone as he used to use to get Bo to sit still for a lecture. _No wiggling_ , which wasn't fair. It was just easier for Luke and Daisy to hold still than it was for him. "There wasn't nothing wrong with your mama, Bo. We just didn't know her, was all. She could've been from revenuer stock. Or bureaucratic stock. We just didn't know. She was—" an outsider. Flatlander, as the old-timers would say. "But your daddy, he didn't stand ready to wait for nothing at all. Said he was in love and wasn't nothing going to hold him back from being wed. You're like Em that way, Bo. You fall in love quick and hard."

"Uncle Jesse, I known Luke all my life. You known him since he was born. He ain't a revenuer and he ain't a stranger and it ain't like I just fell in love with him yesterday. We been together for a long time." On and off, anyway.

"I know that, Bo, and this ain't about you and Luke, at least not mostly. It's about me." Pause, Jesse sucking in a breath, looking him over right quick. "You figure you're in love with Luke?"

Well, yeah. There's not a whole lot else that would explain how he's put up with being pushed away then pulled close again for months at a time, and love was definitely a prerequisite to sex with Luke. He wouldn't even think of doing that with any other man. But he hasn't said it outright to Luke yet; doesn't seem right to say it to Jesse first. (Or first _again_ , he reckons he's already said it first once.) So he just nods, heat rushing into his face.

"Well you daddy loved your mama, too. And she loved him right back, so they done what anyone who's in love would do; they didn't pay no one who tried to talk sense into them any mind."

"Are you saying me and Luke shouldn't pay you any mind?" Seems an unusual lesson that Jesse's trying to teach him. If he's not supposed to listen to his uncle, what were all those whippings in his early teens supposed to be for?

"If I told you now that you had to listen to every word that I said, that you had to walk away from Luke right this minute, would you do it?" A pause, and Bo would swear there's a smirk pulling Jesse's beard off to the left. "I didn't think so. Now let me finish telling you about your parents."

Bo has the odd wish to beg Jesse to skip the rest. To go right for the whip if that's where this is leading, or to leave him be if it's not. But this here is tale-telling time, and a rogue train crashing through their barn couldn't stop Jesse now. Best just to sit as still as he can and let the words run their course.

"They done what every couple in love ever done before them, they run off together. Dang fools was barely twenty. Got married over in Chickasaw, with only Judson," Luke's dad, "and Julia's mama in attendance. Her folks weren't revenuers, her pa was a deceased railroad man, and her ma was having every bit as much trouble raising her as I'd had with my brothers. Albert and Jack said I should have stopped the wedding, Judson said I should never have tried to get between Em and Julia in the first place, oh, it was a mess." Another pause while Jesse goes back to running his thumbnail up and down that invisible line on his overalls. "They didn't go far, of course. Just off to still site number three with its cabin, which Em set to building into something worth living in. You come along ten months later and though Em wasn't exactly happy to do it, he called me to midwive because you didn't want to come out. So I was there to see you born."

Well. He always knew he's been born halfway up Lookout Mountain, and that his folks had lived in a cabin there. He'd never known it was an old still site; Dukes haven't run a still anywhere near there as long as he's been alive.

"You was a pretty baby, Bo. I figured I should invite your folks to come back here to the farmhouse now that they had them a little one to care for and no electricity up there. Oh, there weren't a lot of room down here. Albert and Kate had moved out by then, and Jack and Leigh Ann was getting ready to make their own move over to Placid to be closer to her ma, and of course they was going to take Daisy with them. Me and Lavinia was still here and then there was Judson and Luke, with Coralee pregnant again." Right, Luke's brother Jud was born two months after Bo, and then he was gone again two weeks after that. "Ed was still hanging on, but he was single and didn't have no kids, but it looked like Thomas was going to marry Francine Gardner and move out any day."

It's dizzying, same as it always has been, to listen to Jesse talk about the crazy number of Dukes in their fathers' generation. And then to realize all over again that, one way and another, they're all gone now.

"Anyway, I figured we could make room for the three of you, but Em said no. He told me that he and Julia, who might just be from stock that wasn't good enough for Dukes, would be just fine up there alone on the side of Lookout Mountain. That boy had some pride and he didn't react too kindly to it getting hurt." Another little smirk at his uncle's lips. "The apple don't fall too far from the tree, I reckon." Which might be a dig at Bo or at Jesse's own father, or just Dukes in general. It's hard to tell. "Anyways, things between me and Em wasn't good, and most of my brothers sided with me. Judson tried to play peacemaker, running diplomatic missions between the farm and that old cabin, but Em wouldn't have none of it. Him and Judson stayed close anyways, same as they ever had been. Thicker'n thieves because them two was the youngest and had banded together early on to survive amongst all us bigger boys. Judson was up on Lookout Ridge as often as he was home on the farm, and he and your daddy still made and run 'shine together from the corn that Judson grew down here. Coralee had her baby then lost him, and Judson started spending even more time up with you and your mama and Daddy. Coralee was a mess and Luke wasn't doing too good with his mama all withdrawn and his daddy hiding out up in your cabin, so me and Lavinia cornered Judson and told me that he had to do right by Coralee, and that we'd watch over Luke and he should take his wife out somewhere special. He answered back that we needed to do right by Em and Julia. Oh, it was a mess."

"I reckon," Bo says, standing and stretching, "that I've had enough of a rest now. Best I get back to that seed."

Jesse nods, but it doesn't change anything at all. They both know what comes next and that no matter how much seed Bo hauls, the story isn't going to get any better. His parents are still going to be dead.

"As a show of good faith, me and Lavinia offered to take care of both of you boys so that Em and Julia could join Judson and Coralee for a weekend trip to Crystal Lake."

And they never came back. Not whole, anyway, not warm and breathing and safe. They made it back to Hazzard in boxes that are buried under six feet of earth now. The drunk driver that flattened the side of their car and pushed them right off the steep edge of the road so they flipped a half a dozen times before coming to rest on the edge of the lake got tried and told never to drive that way again, then set free. He died soon after, at least that's the way the story's always been told before. Bo's settled for thinking that he couldn't live with the guilt of orphaning a pair of tiny boys.

"Now, there wasn't nothing could have stopped what happened to your folks. I believe that with everything in me. When you get called, you got to go. Your daddy felt the same, I'm sure." Bo has turned away from the conversation, with plans to head to the truck. It's not going to empty itself, after all, and soon enough, some other neighbor's going to want to borrow it. "But," Jesse says, just a little louder. That tone that tells him to stay put and hear this out. He leans his right shoulder against a support beam. He'll stay, but he won't turn around or sit back down. Not unless he gets commanded to. "I could have had my brother here with me. A year and a half, he stayed up on that mountainside, and then he was gone for real and there wasn't nothing I could do to bring him back or get back all the time with him that I lost."

Bo shoves off from the post, starts to walk away. "I'm sorry, Uncle Jesse. But I don't see what that's got to do with me and—"

"Luke says," Jesse interrupts, and there's the quiet crunch of the hay bale shifting. His uncle's gotten to his feet to follow after him. Which is fine, if they work together, they can get the corn hauled in all the faster. So long as Jesse takes it easy, that is, and doesn't do more than his old body can tolerate. "That you want to come back here to live. And I ain't no happier today than I was yesterday about the two of you and I ain't any less worried about what kind of trouble you could get yourselves into, but if coming home is what you want, well, it's what I want, too."

"Thanks, Uncle Jesse," he says, looking at the man out of the corner of his eyes.

"You'd still have to live by my rules, of course," the old man adds.

Of course.


	28. Chapter 28

It wasn't ever much of a nice day, overcast and clammy since morning, but by nightfall there's a cold rain falling heavily out of the sky. Making one hell of a mess out there and half the digging they've done to clear the irrigation routes is going to undo itself.

At least, he thinks as he stares out toward the door, watching dripping people slosh into the Boar's Nest and shuck their slickers at the door, Jesse's little side task took Bo away from the digging long enough to keep him from making too much of a mess of his hands.

They've come out, every last Duke at the farmhouse, because there's nothing else to do. They could challenge each other to checkers, but that would mean three uncomfortable men in close quarters while Daisy was out here, working, alone. (Sort of, half the county's here. It seems that the rain is falling everywhere and making more than just the Dukes restless.) Now they're just two uncomfortable men, one flirting man, and a waitress running busily from here to there, refreshing and placating and generally just trying to keep everyone reasonably happy. Boss, in the booth nearest his office, wears a frown that curves around his cigar like an upside down banana, and Rosco's eyes are round and spooked over something that none of the rest of them is privy to, but otherwise Daisy's efforts appear to be working.

Jesse's across the small table from him, probably watching Bo make his way through the girls. Maybe trying to pick one out for him, maybe worrying over how unfair it is for Bo to lead these little ladies on when he's got no plans of settling with any of them.

The knot of girls isn't so thick or tight as it was last time Bo was here. There are plenty in the place, but he's not such a rare commodity anymore. Not as blonde and tall and pretty, now that they've seen him three times in six months. Some of them are even staying with the guys they came in with.

His cousin's out there anyway, playing at dancing with them, teasing them and otherwise having fun. Because Luke told him to, but it's not like he had much of a choice. They're supposed to look the same to outsiders as they always did and there's not ever been a time that Bo didn't smile for the ladies. Or otherwise act like he'd like to see each and every one of them naked.

Meanwhile, Mary Ellen's three tables away, sitting with Maybelle Tillingham and giving Luke hungry little looks as often as she thinks she can get away with it. He keeps expecting Jesse to tell him to go over and put her out of her misery by asking her to dance.

Instead, the old man excuses himself over to a table closer to the bar and safer from the antics on the dance floor. Looks like Sunshine has broken out a checker board, which means Luke's on his own for the rest of the night. Which is just grand; he goes back to watching the door because it's in the opposite direction from Bo and the girls. Nothing to see there but wet people coming in and putting their yellow, blue, green and tan raincoats in a pile with the sort of choreography of practiced routine. If Myrtle Jacobs winds up leaving at the end of the night with Prentiss Farrow's slicker instead of her own, well, it'll just get returned tomorrow, along with a peach pie. Many a Hazzard marriage has started in just that way. Meanwhile the whole pile of them is being kept warm and getting licked dry by one fat basset hound. It occurs to Luke that he should go over there and haul the beast out of the pile before she gets completely buried and he even starts to get to his feet to do so, but then there's that too-long gray wool coat that glides in the door, covering over that too-long black skirt that ends just at the tops of shiny black boots that look like patent leather but aren't, really. They're some sort of plastic that a teacher's salary can afford, and Luke doesn't need to track his eyes up the body to know that its owner will be wearing wire rimmed glasses that hide yellow-amber eyes.

"Hannah," he mumbles aloud, though there's no one close enough to hear him over the sound of Willie Nelson's nasal drone vibrating the walls, or the laughter of those who've been here long enough to feel pretty happy by now. He makes it to his feet with intent to greet her (and ask what in heck has brought her here of all places, when she'd never seen fit to accompany him in the year and a half that they dated) but she looks over at him then resolutely walks the opposite direction, toward the bar and Daisy.

Or, no. Make that toward Bo, who is between the door and the bar, talking to one of the Roberts twins while the other stands off to the side and shakes the length of her golden hair in an attempt to draw his attention away from her sister. One of them is as pretty as the next and Hannah's lucky to be cute on a good day, but she's striking in her dark clothes and serious stance that makes the fully-grown Roberts twins look about as mature as the kindergarten children she teaches. Bo stiffens mid-flirt and stares at Hannah with fascinated horror. As does half the clientele in the Boar's Nest; the other half are looking at Luke to see what he's going to do about his former fiancée approaching Bo as boldly as brass.

* * *

"I heard you were in town," carries clearly in the break between one Willie song and the next as the jukebox changes records in response to the latest quarter dropped into its slot.

Luke sits back down, slowly, and makes a point of looking off toward the entrance, like there's something fascinating there. Bo turns his head toward the bar and Daisy, but she's frozen like a deer that's just heard a twig crack under the heavy foot of a hunter. Jesse, at his table near the bar, is genuinely absorbed in his game of checkers.

_You're on your own, Bo._

Excellent.

"Hi, Hannah," he says, his voice cracking with what he hopes sounds like reasonable curiosity instead of nervousness.

It's like someone pulled the plug on the Boar's Nest and it has all spun to a slow and slightly frightening stop. Smell of beer and cheap perfume hangs heavy in the air as all the world (or maybe it's more like half the patrons, but still it's daunting) turn to watch what's sure to be a fiasco ending in dead bodies strewn from here to the Chickasaw line.

"So, like I was saying," Patty Roberts insists, trying with all her might to draw his attention back to her, but she doesn't stand a chance. And it's nothing personal, really. No one has time to notice a pretty little bluebird when there's a vulture circling right over their heads. "Penny and me would sure be thrilled to have you and Luke," said with a slightly pointed edge to his cousin's name. Reminding all of them that Luke's a free man now, not tied down by an engagement, and he can go anywhere with any girl that he sees fit. "Join us for a picnic on the square next Saturday." Penny silently echoes the sentiment with a nod, her hand teasing carefully through her wavy hair that's longer and darker than it was when the twins were skinny ninth-graders and Bo was getting ready to graduate high school. Hardly more than kids then, but they've grown into their bodies now and all their signals say they'd still be willing to fight each other over Bo Duke. Luke, presumably, has been invited so he can referee. And maybe comfort the loser.

"Well," he offers his smile. It's how he lets girls down easy or at least gives them a moment of beauty before breaking their hearts. He's not sure he musters a truly worthy one, though, aware as he is of those yellow-brown eyes watching him, and most likely the bright blue ones behind that. It's like a train wreck – Luke might want to look away, but he's only got so much resolve in the face of complete disaster. "Ladies, I'm sure I speak for both me and Luke when I say how sorry I am. But we's due back in North Carolina, day after tomorrow." Whether they're actually going to go still seems in question, but he's being completely honest when he says they're supposed to go back. "It sure has been nice to talk to y'all," he consoles. "But I reckon I'd best," he lifts his empty mug and points in the general direction of the bar.

"Next time you're home then," Patty says agreeably and starts to walk off. Penny stays put, still playing with her hair and rocking back and forth just slightly to the beat of the music. Smiling secretly at Bo like she thinks maybe he's dismissed her sister just so he can spend time with her. Until Patty grabs her by the arm and hauls her away. He takes a step toward the bar and the patrons go back to whatever thy were doing before they figured that maybe Patty and Penny would start brawling with Hannah, and maybe Bo and Luke would go at it with each other on the side. He doesn't get far before there are cool fingers gripping at the crook of his elbow just below the edge of his rolled-up sleeve.

"Bo."

There are rules about this. Among men, among friends. Who is allowed to spend time with whom and for how long – ever since that time when he and Luke went after girls like they were going out of style, it's been a complicated equation about who he's not supposed to get caught in compromising positions with, and he's never much cared for math.

But then there's Hannah. She's a nice enough girl, earnest and no threat, really. Still wearing her coat like she plans on fleeing at the slightest threat, and under that a long dark skirt and plain turtleneck. Nothing to see but the pale skin of her face, glasses and hair frizzed by the rain, and it's not like she's going to hurt him.

(Luke might. Hard to say why he'd do it, whether it would be because he appeared to like Hannah or Hannah appeared to like him.)

"What can I do for you, Hannah?" He all politeness and formality. A proper gentleman and sure, tongues from the square in town all the way out to the furthest cabin will wag about those Duke boys and that kindergarten teacher; that's nothing new. Might even be helpful, it'll certainly fit with the Duke boys' reputations as womanizers. But the carefully respectful edge to his voice, his perfect manners, those are just wisdom. Later he can point out that he was no more friendly than growing up in Hazzard dictates.

"I thought, maybe if you didn't mind, we could dance. Isn't that what people come here to do? Dance?" Well, yeah, that's one of the things.

"Well, I was just about to—" fill his mug and get back to Luke. Who is, when Bo looks up to confirm it, watching him. From the corner of his eye while Flash sits heavily on his lap. (Where did she come from and why does Luke have her?) Pretending to be more interested in the dog than anything Bo and Hannah might be doing. Which hasn't got anyone in the place fooled, not even Flash. "And you're still wearing your coat, so." There's no need to finish that sentence. A girl can't dance in a coat. It would be ridiculous. "So, if you'll excuse me, I reckon I'm going to get myself another beer."

The way Hannah follows after him to the bar obliterates the second half of his plan, where he was going to go sit next to Luke. The only thing more awkward than standing at the bar and trying to brush Hannah off would be sitting at a table watching Luke and Hannah make up their minds whether they're going to ignore each other or make moon eyes behind each other's backs.

"I'll have another," Bo says, trying to hand his mug to Daisy, but she's too busy trying to make up her mind whether to pretend she doesn't see him or just plain duck low behind the bar.

"Daisy," Hannah greets, "could you hold this for me?" Funny how the girl is not particularly pretty and probably hasn't been sexy a day in her life, but taking off her coat is somehow salacious in an awkwardly near-pornographic way all the same.

"Ad, uh, hold this for me, too, I guess," he says of his mug. He doesn't look at Daisy for fear that her glare will leave third degree burns in its wake. "Shall we?" he asks, offering his arm in all formality.

Because he's being silly. He's handled Luke's broken-hearted leftovers since he was barely past high school. He knows how this goes. The girl dancing close to him, pretends with all her might to really want to be with Bo, but when she thinks she can get away with it, her eyes travel to Luke, looking for signs of jealousy, but what they find is—

And that's where it falls apart. If they're playing the game by the rules they set up five years ago, Luke's supposed to have already found himself a girl to be necking with in the corner. It's Bo that gives a jealous look across the room to find that the only girl whose attention Luke's got has dropping eyes, long ears and might just pee in his lap, if he's not careful.

Bo holds out his hands when they reach the dance floor, and Hannah takes them carefully, formally. They are, it seems, going to do the box step. Well, all right, Bo can do that, too, though he can't swear that he's had cause to since the church dances they used to attend before he hit puberty. When girls were things that politeness forced him to touch, against his will and better judgment.

"What can I do for you, Hannah?" This might just be a first for him; here he is in the Boar's Nest with a girl on his arm and his legs don't want to dance, they want to run. As far from this mess as they can get.

"You dance really well, Bo." He halfway feels like he's been congratulated for learning to tie his shoes all over again. Balloons and streamers aren't appropriate after the first time a new skill gets mastered and he's been able to dance since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. Then again, Luke's plenty protective of Hannah, never having anything bad to say about her. She must not be as patronizing as she sounds.

Still. "Thanks," isn't exactly what he wants to say to her.

Box stepping to Waylon's "Luckenbach, Texas" is awkward and clumsy, like running a marathon through molasses. It feels like it has gone on for an hour before the first verse is over.

"How is Luke doing?" she asks him finally, quietly. Like maybe she's afraid Luke will overhear from half a room away over the throbbing beat of the jukebox. Or maybe she's just realized that all the eyes in the place are following the spectacle of wild-boy Bo Duke dancing all prim and proper with a school teacher that also happens to be his cousin's former fiancée. He ought to tell her, as a native to the region, that no amount of whispering is going to make the vultures stop circling, and that keeping your words from being heard only makes it fair game for the gossips to invent their own dialogue to fit the scene.

"Luke's fine." Flash, on the other hand, might be at risk for getting her neck accidentally wrung by hands that started out simply trying to keep her drooping body from falling to the floor.

"I know that Daisy's divorce hit him real hard." That, or made him want to hit L.D. real hard. "And I know it upset him. And Uncle Jesse." Oh, of course. If she was engaged to Luke, she got to call the man Uncle Jesse. And though half the county has done the very same since before Bo was old enough to know that they weren't all his nephews and nieces, it rankles him coming from Hannah. (Though, he has to admit, there's not much that Hannah can do that isn't guaranteed to rankle him.) "And you. Luke used to say that I might never get to meet you, except on our wedding day. That you were too busy on the NASCAR circuit to ever make it home. Now you've been here three times in seven months." Is that an accusation? She couldn't know why, could she? What reason did Luke give her for breakin up with her? He can't remember if he ever asked; he just remembers fighting and sex and then fighting again.

"I always meant to come home before." He hopes it doesn't sound as thin to her ears as it does to his. "Uncle Jesse was forever telling me I should visit. I guess it was Daisy needing me that brought me home." _And Luke that kept me away before that_ , but he doesn't say that.

"Well, anyone can see how the breakup of her marriage has shaken up your whole family. And I figure it makes sense that Luke got spooked by it." Spooked, hell, the only one who ought to be spooked is L.D. That man better be running for the rest of his life. "I guess there's never been a divorce in your family before."

"No, ma'am." Her hair may not be up in a bun and she may not be standing in a classroom, but she's still a teacher. He reckons it's perfectly reasonable to call her ma'am, even if it is a bit formal. "Not as far as our family bible goes back." There are, however, a few smudges and gaps of white space here and there that have been left up to all of them to interpret as they see fit.

"Well, I know what it's like, you know, when people get divorced. My parents did."

"Oh. Sorry." He's not sure if that's the right thing to say. None of his friends' parents got divorced, either. But his parents died and everyone's been telling him how sorry they are his whole life, so it's the only thing he can think to say.

"Thanks."

Funny, he's never really noticed how long "Luckenbach, Texas" lasts before. Those times when he and Luke have picked it out on guitar and sung it in their harmonies, it's always gone by quickly, leaving them to move on to "Mama's Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys" in no time at all.

"But just because my parents got divorced doesn't mean I ever would. In fact, I swore to myself after my father moved out on my mother that I would find myself a good man. All he had to be was good, and I'd stay with him, no matter what." One-two-three-four, Bo's feet move by rote while Waylon suggests getting back to the basics of love. (But is that the first time those lyrics have gone by or the second? How long can this song drag out, anyway?) "Luke's a good man, Bo. Not perfect," and she might be one of the few women in Hazzard to have noticed that. Most of them see him thinking up some grand scheme to keep Boss Hogg from robbing his own bank or draining the water supply so he can build a bunch of condominiums on a dried lakebed, and figure Luke's got to be the smartest man they've ever met. Then they notice the blue eyes and all their brain power stops. "But he's good. And I don't care how many lean years the farm might have, I would never leave him." She's also more subtle than most Hazzard girls; she doesn't say the rest. _Now go tell him what I said so he'll come back to me_.

There, at long last, is Willie's voice drilling through the final chorus of the song in harmony with Waylon. No more than a half dozen more awkward squares left to dance through, his legs stepping short to match her stride, and he figures he ought to do her the courtesy of looking at her instead of all the faces around, staring with varied degrees of openness.

"I hear tell that you're going back to NASCAR in a couple of days." Yep, that's what he just told the Roberts girls, right in front of Hannah. It might seem like an hour ago, but it can't be more than five minutes. "And it's sweet that Luke's going back with you. He used to talk about you a lot, you know. When we first met, everything out of his mouth was 'me and Bo this' and 'me and Bo that'." Again, he's left to wonder just how much Hannah knows. Luke and his insistence on honor and doing what's right – had he told her about them from the beginning? When he left her? Has she just guessed or is he reading into her words? "I know he missed you all those years when you were gone. It's nice that you're getting to spend time together."

Willie and Waylon are winding down now, singing about blue eyes crying in the rain. Whatever this interaction with Hannah is, he's glad it's coming to an end. He'll just head up to the bar and get his beer, then maybe a dozen more to drink in quick succession and forget this whole thing ever happened. (There are only two problems with that plan. First, Uncle Jesse's sitting right over there, slyly watching his every move. There's no way he'd even get to his third beer without the old man dragging him out of here by some tender part. Even if the other problem with his plan is that Boar's Nest beer is more suds than alcohol and couldn't intoxicate a kitten.)

"But I know that even if Luke can get Boss Hogg to let him out of the county indefinitely, he'll be back here," Hannah informs him. "It's in his blood, the land, the farm. He'll want to settle down eventually, and when he does, it'll be here in Hazzard." She smiles then, in that funny way she has, her cheeks puffing around her dimples. "And I'll be here, too. I understand why he got scared and I'm not holding any grudges. I'll be right here when he's ready." The guitar riff starts to fade away and Hannah steps back, still smiling for him. "Thank you for the dance, Bo. I'll see you around."

Bo stands his ground, alone on the dance floor where everyone gives him plenty of space. Like him, they are all watching as Hannah walks over the bar, retrieves her coat from Daisy, and heads for the door.

* * *

"Luke." It's just short of a whine. Less than an inch, less than a fraction of an inch, barely a hair's breadth short of being a whine. "The rule is not to let no one catch us doing nothing out of the ordinary. You sleeping down the hall in a different bedroom is out of the ordinary." It's a slight variation in the same refrain Bo's been repeating since they left the Boar's Nest. The drive home has never seemed longer.

"Bo." It wouldn't be a proper song if he didn't have his own refrain that's not quite harmonious with the repeating verses.

"No, Luke, I'm serious." Oh, well, maybe he'd better get the newspaper here on the double, because this here is a breaking story. Bo Duke is serious. Of course, he's pretty sure that even old Coop, who he went to high school with and who ended up at the Atlanta Times-Herald, couldn't be enticed to come out to a barren (but for a pair of Dukes and their General Lee) stretch of Old Mill Road at nine thirty on a Friday night. Just about anyplace else has got to be more interesting.

Heck, Jesse thought so. He stayed behind at the Boar's Nest when Bo insisted on leaving. If anything's going to seem unusual to the Hazzard folk, it'll be that Bo Duke all but pulled his cousin away from a potential night of carousing, just because some kindergarten teacher forced him to dance formally with her.

Then again, everyone in town knows who Hannah is and what her relationship has been to Luke. There's not a soul in that place that wasn't glad to see the Duke boys leave so they could start jawing about the spectacle they just witnessed. It's amazing Jesse decided to stay behind; then again, maybe he plans to try to rescue Daisy from having to answer too many unanswerable questions, or otherwise coordinate damage control.

"If Rosco was to come crawling through our window tonight and found out we was sleeping in two different rooms, don't you think he'd be suspicious?"

Suspicious, maybe. Guilty of breaking and entering, most likely. Scared out of his wits and blabbering to the world if he found both Duke boys in Luke's bed (which is what Bo is really angling for), absolutely, no question.

"Just get us home," Luke counsels as the General kicks dirt clumps in a thick spray to the right. Fishtailing over nothing at all, other than Bo's lead foot and fit of temper. (Or maybe it's not a tantrum. Bo drives like this when the rear window's been shattered by gunfire and the shooters are still on their tail. Sacred, but of what? Hannah's hurt, upset, determined, but in the end, she's just a girl with a gentle temperament and an utter lack of facility with weapons.) "In one piece. We'll figure out where we sleep," if they are able to sleep at all tonight, "when we get there."

Which turns out, after he has sent Bo off to the bathroom – where the fool all but takes a shower in his urgency to wash the residue of broken-hearted girl off him – is their bedroom. Luke waits for Bo, dressed only in loose, grey sweatpants now, to sit on the edge of his bed before handing off the milk he warmed during his cousin's endless pretty-making in the bathroom and sits at the end of his own.

"Luke," Bo says complains. There's no magic elixir to make Bo sleep, no way that Luke can assure that his cousin will settle down. But last night's warm milk did seem to calm something in him. It's worth a shot. "What does Hannah know about us?"

Everything and nothing. Luke figures he talked her ear off at first, because she was new to town and an eager listener, drinking in stories of his and Bo's adventures like they were an oasis in the desert. But eventually letting her in on those tales had started to feel like betrayal, like he was telling secrets that he only had half ownership of. Maybe it was that he couldn't tell her just how much Bo meant to him and maybe it was that he figured he wanted to lock some of those memories away where only he could have access to them, and no one else could taint them in any way. And maybe he'd gotten tired of talking, chattering on like some school kid (or like Bo) that didn't know any better. Whatever it was, he stopped talking about Bo and just told her that no, she'd probably never get to meet him. Then he gave her his mother's ring and conceded that yes, Bo would most likely show up for their wedding. (It wasn't, he didn't tell her, a moment that he was looking forward to. And then he studiously went about not setting a date for the wedding.)

"Nothing," he answers, because he knows the intent of Bo's question. _What does she know about us being together, about the things we do when no one else is looking_. "I told you that already." Didn't he? He's pretty sure it's come up before. "She knows you're my cousin, that's it."

He gets a sigh in response, followed by a slurp of milk. Funny face that tells him Bo just realized he's drinking milk with the mint of toothpaste still on his tongue. Oh well, he'll get used to it. "Then why was she saying all them," a wave of Bo's free hand through the air in some sort of a frustrated gesture. Luke grabs the milk out of his other hand to keep it from sloshing on his bed. (Not that it'll matter, he tells himself. They're both going to end up in Luke's bed, even if it's not the wisest thing they could do when they're hardly in anyone's good graces.) "Strange things?"

"Like what?"

"About how she knew you'd missed me and she was glad we was getting to spend time together, and nice that you're going up to North Carolina with me, but that you'll be back and she'll be waiting?"

Well, isn't Bo just a good little reporter. Must be well over a dozen girls have gone the same route as Hannah did back in their younger years, and sure, Bo made a point of telling him that they'd done it. But the poorly cloaked pleas of the desperate young ladies have never made it so perfectly intact from their mouths to his ears. Bo is spooked.

"She ain't manipulative, Bo." He gets a look that tells him he has no idea what he's talking about, and furthermore, Bo's lowered eyebrows inform him, he's defending the enemy. Except Hannah's not as bad as Bo's making out. Still, Luke hands the milk back to him as some sort of twisted offer of peace. "She's just upset. Still mad and hurt," and whatever else it is that girls feel that make them act like such fools sometimes. "But she don't know nothing and if Jesse hadn't put in your mind that someone could figure it out, you wouldn't be thinking that way. Ain't a soul in Hazzard that suspects a thing about you and me."

Bo stares into the milk like all the proof in the world that Hannah's out to get them is written on its white surface.

"She said you was afraid of divorce," he pouts. "That Daisy and L.D. made you that way and that she'd never leave you, no matter how poor you was." Well, wasn't that just gracious of her.

"She ain't got to leave me, because I already left her. Drink up," he encourages, when Bo stops staring at the mug long enough to lift it to his lips.

While Bo's doing as he's told, Luke strips his shirt off and stands to do the same with his jeans. His dirty clothes get kicked in the general direction of the corner; they can be put into the laundry basket tomorrow.

Bo's eyes raise up to him, looking for all the world like the kid he was not so very long ago.

"Done?" he asks, hand out for the mug. Bo hands it over without complaint and Luke sets it on the nightstand. Then he pulls back his tidily tucked blankets and sheets and sits on his bed. "Come on," he says holding the covers open. Because it's a waste of time to put on a charade of sleeping in two separate beds when they both know they're going to end up together before the night is through. And it's not going to matter whether Uncle Jesse catches them together at eleven at night or five in the morning. He'll be angry either way, and the two of them will just have to find a way to deal with that when it happens.

* * *

"What's it going to take to make you sleep?"

"You ain't sleeping neither." Even if it wasn't for the talking Bo would know that just from the tension in Luke's arms around him in the bed that groans and whines with every move of a pair of too-heavy bodies. He almost feels sorry for the thing, except for the way it's sagging uncomfortably under his hip. Maybe it's the way he's laying – Luke's the shorter one so why is he curled up with his ear to Luke's heart? – or the mattress registering a protest against the abuse it's receiving or just maybe it's—

"Is this my old mattress?" he asks, because it's taken him until now to really think about it. How the bed he's been sleeping on seems firmer than it used to, and this once seems to sag in a familiar way.

A shrug that he feels in his temple and cheek. "I switched them out a while back." Which means that before he built that room out of a porch or while he was building it or after he left Hannah – somewhere in there, anyway, Luke took to sleeping on Bo's mattress instead of his own.

"Aw, ain't you sentimental."

"What's it going to take to make you quit talking and go to sleep?" Luke growls, a little more firmly this time. "I reckon Uncle Jesse's going to be home soon and if you ain't shut your mouth by then he might just come in here to see what all the fuss is about." And doing his best to try and distract Bo from what he's just realized. Hannah said that Luke had missed him, heck, he knew Luke missed him, but not enough to sleep on a mushy mattress when Luke's always preferred one that felt an awful lot like sleeping on wet sand.

He reaches up a hand with intent to pat Luke on the face, figures it's close enough when his fingertips find jawbone. Affection for the man who pretends he doesn't need any.

"Maybe I just ain't tired." But a yawn that stretches out those last few words tells tales on him.

"I could knock you over the head," Luke offers. "You'd sleep then." A hand comes up to lightly cuff him just to give him the idea. Then the fingers tangle into his hair and cup the back of his head, tipping it for a kiss. "She don't know nothing, Bo," follows in a private little whisper. "And she don't want to, neither, so she ain't never going to figure it out. People don't go looking for things they don't expect to find."

"I know." But he doesn't sound convinced, even to his own ear. His tone is too high, too close to a whine and Luke never tolerates that well. Gets testy and snappish and on a bad day he'll tell Bo to stop being such a baby. On a good day he'll mentally draw himself away so he can start solving whatever the problem is, and that doesn't make Bo feel any less like whining.

"She ain't no threat, coz." So much for quiet whispers and worrying over Uncle Jesse coming home to find them this way. That one was full volume. "But if you want, I reckon I could go and see her in the morning and tell her to quit waiting on me because I ain't never coming back to her. If that's what you want."

Right. Because Bo's all for being cruel to girls that are foolishly head over heels for his cousin. And he has to let out a wry little chuckle at himself. He can see where he's just tying himself in knots over a woman that's just like a couple dozen others – falling hard for Luke and somehow thinking he was a gentleman that would look after her for life. He doesn't have enough fingers to list off the ones who deliberately got themselves into some kind of trouble or other so Luke would pay them some amount of attention, get gentle and make sure they didn't get hurt. Maybe even call them honey, but it would all end the minute they were safe and Luke had leveled whoever it was that had threatened them. Girls always stopped existing in Luke's eyes as soon as they weren't in danger anymore.

And then they came to Bo, which is all that Hannah has done. Making her case and it's only threatening because Luke stayed with her, heck he got engaged to her. No wonder she's going to try to sink her little claws in all the harder.

"I reckon that would do more harm than good," Bo tells him.

The sheets rustle and he feels the slight movement that's probably Luke's nod of agreement. "Besides, we'll be back in Mooresville in a couple of days," he says. After that there's nothing but the sound of Luke's heartbeat in his ear as they both pretend to be almost asleep in hopes of lulling the other one into believing it and following suit.

Mooresville is only a day and a half away. For the past couple days, Luke's dropped the subject of what they're going to tell Doug Reed when they get there. It hasn't been much of a question in his mind, not since he realized that NASCAR was a cage, one with fast cars and big prizes, but still a cage compared to Hazzard's freedom. Dull gray circles around an endless track or crazy chases over green grass and yawing ravines – it's no real choice. Hazzard wins, hands down. But Jesse's rules and the threat of Rosco or Boss ever finding out, Hannah waiting quietly on the sidelines – Mooresville might be easier. At least once they get behind the closed doors of Bo's apartment, there won't be anyone to care what they do or how often they do it. (After this long week gets done stretching out emptily, Bo's thinking they might just want to do it hourly, starting the minute they cross the threshold.) He couldn't care a whole lot about whether he becomes Reed's senior driver or wins a bunch of races, but if NASCAR provides him and Luke with a veil to hide themselves behind, it's worth considering another dozen seasons or so.

"What do I got to do to make you sleep?" Luke mumbles and it's only then that he realizes that his fingertips have been drawing nonsense patterns on the knobs and dips of Luke's ribs like a code so secret even he doesn't know what it means.

"Sorry," he answers back. What he's doing probably tickles in that annoying, itchy way. "I just can't get that dang song out of my head."

"What song?"

"Never mind." Getting it out of his head begins with trying to forget it even exists, starting right now.

"Oh," Luke says after less than half a minute's silence. "You mean, _let's go to Luckenbach Texas_ ," he starts to sing. " _With Waylon and Willie and the boys_." Those last words are peppered with bursts of laughter as Bo swats his ribs.

"Quit that," he complains.

"What? You don't want to _sell your diamond ring, but some boots and faded jeans and go away_."

"No, I don't. And I ain't got no diamond ring to sell, neither."

"But that _coat and tie is choking you, in your high society you cry all day_."

"I do not." He runs his fingers over Luke's ribs again, a little more intent to tickle him this time. "And I ain't keeping up with the Joneses, neither."

"But," Luke points out, slapping his fingers away with a high pitched laugh that's dangerously close to a giggle. "You do got a four car garage." They have, after all, fit at least four cars into a barn when necessary. Sweet Tillie probably still lives in the barn up in the north fields. He hasn't been up there to check.

" _Maybe it's time we got back to the basics of love_ ," Bo sings back at him, rolling and pressing himself up to pin Luke's hands by his ears in a physical memory of the way the two of them used to wrestle each other as an excuse to rub some of their more sensitive parts against each other.

Somehow they end up in the first verse after that, giggling over forgotten lyrics and missed notes. By the time they get to the chorus for the second time, and Bo lets loose with his Willie Nelson impression, they're cackling so hard that they can hardly sing about the successful life they're living that's got them feuding like the Hatfields and McCoys. It's then that Luke pulls him close again, wrapping both arms around him to keep either one of them from rolling off the bed in their fit of laughter. He fights for his breath and to quiet himself, but then Luke starts up laughing again. Eventually he settles back into the comfortable position that puts him half across Luke's chest, listening to his heart get back to normal. He falls asleep that way, and they never do get around to singing about blue eyes crying in the rain.


	29. Chapter 29

It's kind of like packing for the Marines all over again. Sort of, he's not as young, and the wild varmints aren't bouncing around in his gut like they did then. Now, he reckons, they're tame enough to be called butterflies.

Small ones, because he's not really nervous. Not much, it's just that there's so little that he knows.

Packing a duffel bag (olive green, though when he really went off to the Marines it was more of a navy blue because he hadn't yet been emblazoned with military colors) with just as little knowledge of what he'll need or want, how long he'll have to live without.

Not that it's any kind of a real hardship. Back then he figured he needed to pack enough underwear to last him a week; he didn't know that he's only be packing it away to send back home, that he'd be issued new, military boxers and that he wouldn't be authorized to wear anything else under his khakis until he made it back to Hazzard. Anything personal went back, too; dog tags replaced any jewelry, bald heads eliminated the need for a comb. At least going to Mooresville won't be like basic training, and if it is, well, he knows he can survive it now.

But it would all be a heck of a lot easier of Bo would do some deep thinking, a little bit of planning. If Luke knew whether he was packing up and moving his whole life or just a few days' worth of clothes.

_You can't keep telling him that he can do what he wants, that he needs to make the best decision for him, and then resenting the decision he does make._

A fine piece of advice from his girl cousin. But it's based on the assumption that eventually Bo will make up his mind, and right about now, Luke's beginning to doubt that will ever happen.

How many pairs of socks, how many jeans? The latter are probably not much of a problem; if they stay, he'll be wearing coveralls most days. But the socks, the toiletries. Should be bring his toothbrush or should he plan on sharing Bo's? Will he buy one at the other end or—

But these are idle worries. The bigger problem is Boss Hogg.

 _Luke Duke_ , the man had said this morning, the sound of his voice like hands rubbing together gleefully as a plot was being hatched. _I was wondering how long it would take you to show your face here_. And Luke had been wondering how long it would take Boss to show up at the farm with Rosco in tow and a pair of handcuffs that had been custom fitted just to Luke's size. Just to be on the safe side, Luke had deposited Bo over in Cooter's garage while he made the trip to the Courthouse. No need to hand over two Duke boys for the price of one.

 _I got my contract right here_ , he'd informed the man, pulling it out of his back pocket and smoothing out the wrinkles so the commissioner could read it. Rosco, who was standing just over Boss's left shoulder, had let out a few _oo-oo_ noises and bent closer to the ornately carved oak desk that was about the only thing in Hazzard that was wider than Boss himself. _Says I'm employed by the Reed Driving Team in Mooresville, North Carolina._ Luke had half expected Boss to pull open a drawer in search of a magnifying glass with which to read every word, but he hadn't. He'd just shoved Rosco back and smiled, pleased with himself over something. _Well, it looks like everything's in order here_ and a puff of smoke summed up the entirety of J.D. Hogg's opinion on the matter. _Though I reckon I need Mister… what's his name_ , but the magnifying glass still didn't come out.

 _Marshall Meade will be my direct supervisor_ , Luke had helpfully supplied. _I guess Doug Reed is technically my employer, though_.

Boss's smile had spread slickly across his face at that one. _You'll have to be on your best behavior of course. You get even a traffic violation and I'll have to recall you to Hazzard to face charges of violating the terms of this little agreement we're making here. And_ _I reckon I need Mister Reed to send me a letter in a month or so to tell me that you're a good employee_ , he'd simpered. _And that he means to keep you. Make sure he signs it, now._

It was enough to make a man think that all Boss was after was some hotshot NASCAR owner's autograph. And maybe he was.

_Then I'll send you your final documents, permanently releasing you from the geographic restricts of your probation._

He'd stood there, one hand on his hip, trying to figure out what manner of greedy little plot could be running through that fat head. _Was there something else you needed?_ he'd been asked in a tone so sweet it just about rotted his teeth right out of his head.

No question then, Boss was up to something.

_I was just wondering why you're being so helpful, Boss. It ain't like you._

That had set the both of them, law-maker and law-enforcer both, to sputtering. To accusing him of everything from rudeness to sheriff-scuffing and furthermore being a menace to basset hounds everywhere, so he left.

And now he's packing to be gone in the morning, trying to figure out how many handkerchiefs he might want and no idea when or whether he'll be back. Might be for the best if he never left, because Boss has got to be right on the verge of pulling some manner of fast one that's as likely as not to get Daisy or Jesse or Cooter into trouble.

Finally, he tosses an uncounted wad of handkerchiefs into his duffel and zips it up. He and Bo are leaving in the morning, and all he's been able to think about for the whole week up until this morning, is that Mooresville has got to be a lot easier on the Duke boys than this last week in Hazzard has been.

* * *

Some day they really need one car in the family that's any kind of pleasure to drive on cold days. The top to Daisy's Jeep got torn up by dime-sized hailstones and twisting winds back in that first spring she had it and never got replaced. Which means it's forever wide open to whatever weather might be passing through. The fan in Jesse's truck hasn't worked in decades, so heat only trickles timidly out through the vents, never making it more than an inch or two from the dashboard. Luke's threatened to replace the worn out parts any number of times since about 1972, but the oldster won't hear of it. It works just fine, according to Jesse.

And the General of course, no longer has glass for the windows in his doors. Both sides shattered after Bo's first leap across the Styx River and has never been replaced, what with how quickly the two of them are likely to break it all over again. So the wind whips through the car in summer and winter. And right about now, as they head north in February's chill, Bo's wishing he'd thought to toss his sleeping bag into the back seat before they left home.

It doesn't help that Luke's going the speed limit. Bo's not sure whether to wish they were going slower so less wind would be blowing in, or faster so the trip would be over more quickly. He can understand why Luke's being careful; the cops up here in North Carolina are a mite more competent than Rosco's ever been on his best day, and the ink isn't entirely dry on Luke's freedom to come and go from Hazzard as he pleases. But his cousin doesn't have to be that obedient.

Or that dang quiet. It was nice, at first, to sit in the passenger seat and really look at the hills and hollows as they flashed past, to watch the clouds puff up and float off to the east. To close his eyes sometimes and just smell the sweet air as spring tries to throw off winter, but there's only so much quietly relaxing a man like him is meant to do.

"How long you figure it'll be before Daisy and Enos get themselves hitched up?" It's not meant to be anything more than an icebreaker, a reason for Luke to stop pretending that he's alone in the car. He doesn't care about the answer or have a real opinion of what it should be.

"Daisy ain't even divorced yet. And even when she is, I ain't sure Enos will see her the same way again."

"What? Luke, he's only wanted her since that seventh grade dance he tried to take her to when she was nine. Only reason he didn't was because Lavinia said she was too young to be out past six in the evening." That and Daisy hadn't really wanted to go, not if she had to wear a dress. She'd been going through a muddy-jeans phase right then, refusing to wear anything feminine or even clean. He's smiling at the memory but a glance to his left shows him that Luke's not. A little downward curl at the corner of his lip and it makes Bo want to smile all the more broadly, but he doesn't. Luke's in the sort of sour mood that's got nothing to do with anything at all except being Luke Duke and thinking too hard. It's like getting a surprise visit from his cousin of five years ago, when they drove the back roads of Hazzard for no other reason than to see how fast they could get from here or there, and just how much they could irk Rosco. They had a scale back then – rating their success at annoying the sheriff in ijits. If they only elicited one they were clearly far too tame in their antics, and if whichever one of them was driving the General could manage to get him to sputter for half a minute or more, they were awarded five ijits. Bo figured he'd earned six ijits once when Rosco went down into Hazzard Pond, clinging to his cruiser and hollering insults all the way, but Luke said it didn't count because they'd had to wade into the water and pull the coughing fool out. He had been so busy being mad that he forgot he couldn't swim.

Those were good days, even if the two of them had no idea how to handle the relationship that had been budding between them. It's memories like that one that have had him thinking he wanted to go back to living in Hazzard. Since dancing with Hannah two nights ago, he's been leaning more toward Mooresville, where there will be no former fiancées or uptight family members to deal with.

But then there was this morning, Daisy just about breaking his heart and his collarbone all at once by wrapping herself around his neck like she meant to hold him right there forever, even if she had to break some part of him to do it. Jesse followed up by waiting until they were in the car, engine running (Luke behind the wheel because he'd been quiet and serious and Bo figured there was nothing like racing down the road in the General Lee to cure a man of that) to lean in Bo's window and say his quiet little piece. About how he still wasn't happy and didn't know if he ever would be, but then again he knew that the two of them would take good care of each other. And that there were a lot of challenges in their future, a lot of hardships they'd face and just about the time that Luke was getting ready to smash his foot onto the accelerator and take them out of the driveway at chicken-killing speed, Jesse added that of all the stumbling blocks they might hit, he wasn't going to be one of them. He wouldn't try to stand in their way.

Bo had reached out the window to give him an awkward hug; Luke had mumbled a quiet thanks, and they'd left. Now Bo's got no ideas at all whether he wants to be at home in Hazzard or back in Mooresville. NASCAR itself doesn't matter much at all to him; it's just a question of where he and Luke can live most happily.

But he pushes all his thoughts aside and nudges Luke in the ribs. Whatever their long term plans turn out to be, today has all the makings of being a fine day. Luke smirks back at his giddy smile – he knows what Bo's thinking. Once they get behind the closed door of Bo's apartment in Mooresville, there's not a single thing that's going to keep Bo from divesting Luke of his clothes.

* * *

It's only a matter of time before Bo's little smiles turn into sputtering, momentary giggles that he tries to swallow down, then chuckles that grow in volume until they are out and out cackles.

"What?" he asks, but it almost doesn't matter. Bo's happy, grinning like he hasn't the whole week back home and that's enough. Or should be, should make Luke glad that they're only about an hour out of Mooresville. Back into that anonymous place where no one knows or even thinks to care about what two Duke boys get up to behind closed doors, and it's where he'd been thinking he wanted to be.

Before Boss seemed so happy for him to go, before Jesse's little speech this morning when they sat in the General, getting ready to pull off the farmland for what might be the last time in a good while.

 _You're going to have a hard time of it_ had sounded like every other word Jesse's had to say on the subject of the two of them being together. _Ain't going to be too many times or places you're going to be able to let down your guard. You're going to hit trouble here and there, and there's going to be plenty of people that would never understand. I can't say that I understand none, neither._ Luke had been just about ready to crush the accelerator into the floor of the General, and then Jesse had finished his thought. _But that don't mean I don't love you boys. Whatever stumbling blocks you all are going to run into in life, I ain't going to be one of them._

It wasn't much, hardly anything at all, really. Not enough to merit Bo's fervent and eager little hug that had followed on Jesse's careful speech, or his silly, giddy grin now. But it was something, it was more than he'd expected, maybe. Maybe just enough to make him feel bad about what he'd assumed about Jesse all along, about secrets kept for no real good reason. About Hannah, who really didn't need to get pulled into the middle of this mess, about Daisy who got neglected and ran off to marry a bad man so at least she'd feel like someone was paying her some mind.

As to Bo going off to NASCAR, he's not sure how to feel about that one. Maybe they both feared Uncle Jesse finding out about them more than they should have, but then again, Luke's inquiries did wind up getting his cousin a contract and offering him the opportunity of a lifetime. Which Bo jumped right into and he's doing well there so—

"Luke, you drive like my grandmother." That might just be the third insult Bo's hurled at him; he was smart enough to ignore the first two.

"Your grandmother is my grandmother, Bo." And she's not here to defend herself, either.

"All right, you drive like our grandmother."

"I reckon she probably made a few moonshine runs back in her day. All the Dukes done it." Though by all accounts, their grandmother was a prim and stern woman who rarely smiled and never whooped it up when the men broke out the moonshine. Oh, she drank her fair share, but it didn't make her drunk and it certainly never made her act silly. She also had eyes the same shade of blue as Luke; he's been compared to her all his life. He's not sure he's precisely offended by Bo's declaration.

"Must've been the slowest deliveries ever." Bo's got that silly grin on his face that shows how proud he is of his reasoning.

"Oh yeah?" Luke tests. "What makes you think that?"

"Because you drive like her and you're going too slow."

Just as Luke figured, there are no angles at all to Bo's logic, in fact it's entirely circular.

"Your intellect is truly dizzying," he points out.

"Why, thank you," Bo answers back and either he's oblivious to the fact that he's just been insulted or he just refuses to get upset about it. "Now, do you figure you could go a little faster?"

Sure, and get them pulled over. "The law out here ain't exactly Rosco," he points out. "And there ain't exactly a River Styx to jump over and get away from them, neither." Not out here on the interstate. Or in Mooresville, either. It's not a city, exactly, more like a big town full of all the things towns are full of. Stores and offices and schools and houses. And paved roads with speed limit signs everywhere, traffic lights and hazard signs, crosswalks – rules, basically, to be followed and abided by like good boys. Boring.

"You could go five miles an hour over the speed limit. Wouldn't no cop out here pull you over for that."

But if they did, he'd be back in Hazzard, behind bars and under Boss's thumb so quick it'll make his head spin. Prison and—

"Look at how all them other cars are passing us, Luke. That little old lady in that beat up blue Datsun just laughed at us. The General's going to get a complex," Bo complains. "You got to go a little faster."

"You just want to get to your place all the faster so you can get into my pants." Then again, maybe he should stop thinking so damned much about Boss and Jesse and the past. Maybe he should just be grateful for where he is, and where he'll be within the hour.

"You want to get into mine, too," Bo accuses back. Luke opens his mouth, then closes it again with a click of his molars. You can't argue with a man when he's right.

* * *

"You got that door locked yet, Bo?"

No. He's too busy lugging in the quarts of jam and preserves and pickled this and that that Daisy packed up for them. Got to carry them with both arms and put them down carefully so they don't break, not like the way Luke went sprinting up the steps, duffle bags of clothing swinging any way they wanted to. Stopped at the door and waited for Bo to juggle the contents of his arms well enough to offer up the key to let them inside, then Luke swung the door wide, and dropped the duffels wherever they fell. Now he's already half way to the bedroom and Bo's still loaded down with homemade delicacies.

"I'm a mite busy," is all he says. Luke shakes his head at him like he's being lazy or slow on purpose, but he goes back to shut the door while Bo puts the food down on that little card table he jokingly thinks of as a dining room table. He peeks inside the paper bags with intent to put some of the more perishable foods into the refrigerator, but his wrist gets grabbed and he's getting pulled toward the bedroom door before he can do any of the things he ought to. Like turning on the heat or going to the bathroom, perfectly logical things that any man should do when he's back home after being away from home for a week.

Then again, Luke wants him. Really wants him, more than he wants to be practical or smart, more than he wants to do the right thing.

That's not the sort of gift horse to be looked at in the mouth, really. Not unless you're willing to get bitten first and ignored afterward.

But then again, there's going to be quite a hitch in his cousin's get along (and his own for that matter) unless he gets into the bathroom first. He twists his arm in a quick movement that frees it from Luke's grip, same movement he's used since he was a kid and didn't necessarily want to be dragged wherever Luke led.

"Just a sec," he explains, and takes a step back toward the open bathroom door.

Doesn't make it far before he meets the resistance of the way his own coat is suddenly too tight across his chest and at his neck. It's his nice brown suede coat, the one with the fringe across the chest and the elastic at the waist. Good and warm and it normally fits him quite comfortably, but not, apparently, when Luke's got a solid grip on the back of it. He tries to continue moving toward his destination, but it's about as effective as a cart trying to pull a mule. Besides, he's halfway choking.

But there's a solution to that little problem and it's so simple that Luke doesn't get time to compensate for it – Bo just uses the index finger of his right hand to unhook the button up by his neck and the zipper saws open all by itself. The coat slides easily off his back and right arm, catching only briefly on the left around the wristwatch Bo wears these days.

Luke ought to stumble, he was using a good bit of his weight to keep Bo from moving forward, but he's too damned athletic (or too damned determined), and he drops the jacket to grab that left wrist of Bo's.

"You really ought to let me—" Bo warns, or tries to, but he's too busy laughing at the way he and his cousin are playing tug of war over his arm. Sheer determination up against brute strength, and Bo's got no leverage. He grabs the back of one of his dining chairs, but it's got no weight at all, so now he's pulling against Luke's strength and carrying a chair as well.

Fortunately, the spectacle must be hilarious. He feels the warmth of Luke's grip on his wrist slip just a bit as his cousin laughs at his plight. A tiny bit of freedom before Luke's fingers clamp down hard again, but that's all he needs. Just a half step more and he's got a hand around the knob of the open bathroom door.

Solid yank behind him and either his arm is going to come out of its socket or the door's going to come off its hinges, so Bo gives up his grip. Turns quickly and catches his free hand behind Luke's neck, pulling him forward into a kiss. Messy, awkward because there was no time to line it up properly, and besides, Luke's still half fighting him. Trying to tug him toward the bedroom by the arm that has snaked around his waist and the hand still tight on his wrist, but as soon as Luke makes any progress in his efforts, Bo tips his head back out of the kiss. Pulls his lips into his mouth and tries not to smile at his own cleverness.

Luke tips his head to the side to consider this new development, shrugs and lets go of Bo's wrist to wrap his wide and sweaty hand around the back of Bo's neck while affixing his lips to the front of it.

Damn. Bo just about put his hands up in surrender right then and there. He closes his eyes and swallows deeply against how good it feels, how much he wants to just follow Luke off to the bedroom without concern for anything more than what his body wants.

But it's Luke, so there are always concerns. Concerns there never were with girls, planning and forethought he never needed before. It's annoying, but then again, it's worth it. He'll do whatever it takes.

Which, right now, means pulling himself away from what his body wants. Luke's lips come off his neck with a loud smacking sound that makes him laugh, as he twists out of the warmth of his cousin's arms. Another step toward the bathroom, and Luke's got hold of the hem of his shirt, but it's not buttoned, so all it takes is straightening his arms and letting them fall back to leave the poor guy holding nothing but yellow scrap of cloth (that might just have ripped in all the roughhousing). He dives into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him and giggling nervously as his fingers struggle to twist the slippery lock. He half expects Luke to come slamming into the door after him, but he manages to get it locked anyway, then takes a moment to unbutton, unzip and relieve himself. That's about half of why it's a good reason he made it in here; the other half comes after he rezips, leaves the button open, and flushes. Only then does he do a tight one-eighty in the small confines of the room, open his medicine cabinet and shuffle the contents around until he finds what he wants. Stuffs the little bottle of hand cream into his back pocket and turns to face the door. Stops, listens.

Because Luke should be on the other side, and he should be trying to get in. Or yelling or something, and he's not. Complete, dead silence. Which means ambush.

Bo turns back to the cabinet, opens it again and studies the contents for something to even the odds. Hard to know what will work when he doesn't know what Luke's up to out there. Knowing Luke, he may have constructed a bear trap out of rubber bands and frying pans. His cousin is nothing if not resourceful. And stealthy, when he wants to be.

Shaving cream. It's not much, but it's better than his razor, an aspirin or a comb, which is about all the other contents he's got in the cabinet. He kicks off his boots and shoves them over next to the toilet. Figures sock feet might help him with whatever amount of stealth he might need.

Carefully, with smooth and silent movements, he twists the lock on the door. Wraps his hand around the cool metal of the knob and sucks in a deep breath. Chilly in here and they really should turn on the heat, but he's been lucky to get this far. He's pretty sure that any other practical tasks are just going to have to wait until after he survives whatever Luke's got planned for him.

 _One-two-three_ , he counts quickly in his head. Then flings the door inward, firing blasts of shaving cream as he goes. Not very aerodynamic stuff and there's not a lot of propulsion behind it, so mostly it just drips down the can to splatter on the floor.

Not that it matters. Luke's ambush was simple and straightforward. Bo finds him the minute the door has swung about halfway open, both hands high on the door frame, leaning there and just waiting for Bo to come out. Eyes as blue as Bo has ever seen them, lips curled just a little at the corner, muscled body leaning ever so slightly inward and just—intense. The kind of stare Luke used to level at girls he really liked, the kind of look he'd better never give Bo in any kind of a public place or Jesse's fear of them being discovered might just prove to be valid.

Spastic contraction of Bo's shooting finger, nervous reaction to that look, and there's a splatter of shaving cream decorating the plaid on Luke's shirt. Bo freezes where he is while Luke looks down at his "wound" – it's the sort of mess that fussy Luke is likely to holler at him for, ask him precisely what brand of idiot he is. Or it'll make Luke wrestle the shaving cream away from him to exact some sort of overblown revenge, and since he doesn't relish the notion of digging shaving cream out of his ears for the next two weeks, he tightens his grip on the can. Which is a silly idea, it's slick with melting shaving cream and just slips out of his hand to hit the carpet with a muted thud.

By that point, Luke's eyes have come back up to meet his, that curl at the corner of his lip looking more like a smirk now. Wide hand lets go of the door molding to wrap around the back of Bo's head and pull him close, a kiss to steal his breath away. Pulling Luke close and he doesn't doubt for a second that half of the blob of shaving cream that was once all Luke's is now mashed onto the front of his tee shirt too, but he really can't bring himself to care. He's just happy to have two free hands to wrap around Luke, to snake up his back and feel the muscles shift. Luke's other arm is low around his waist, warm and tight as a stock car restraint, like it can keep him safe from anything that would ever try to hurt him.

The kiss stops; must, because Luke's mumbling in his ear, hot breath and the movement of his own hair tickling so much he tries to move away on instinct, but the hand tangled in his curls keeps him there.

"You going to come quietly now?"

_Yes, sir._

Luke's shirt doesn't make it into the bedroom with them, Bo doesn't quite know how or when it gets shucked because he's stumbling half-blind, his own tee shirt getting lifted over his head. Luke catches his hand, once it's free, and tugs him into the room. No time (or need, really, but it's habit) to close the door, he's getting shoved onto the bed, Luke crawling up after him. Bo propped on his elbows, Luke on all fours and practically sitting in his lap to kiss him again. Wiggling and tussling, him trying to get further back on the bed and Luke trying to keep him where he is. He reaches back with one hand – wrist still red and hot from where Luke grabbed and held onto him earlier – and wraps his fingers around the headboard for leverage. Pulling himself back while Luke grips his waist, trying to still him. And old-fashioned wrestling match, good natured and fun like they haven't had since well before Bo moved out here to NASCAR.

Luke leans back on his haunches, halfway intent to break the kiss and Bo relinquishes his hold on the headboard to sit up and follow after him, gets a dirty little chuckle from Luke and a hand against his chest, pushing him back down, the kiss breaking with a mess smack.

Bo's hand goes back to gripping the headboard; if he's not going to get kissed, he can at least pull himself fully onto the bed instead of letting his legs hang off the edge. Seems to be okay with Luke, too, who has just grabbed hold of the waist of his jeans and is letting Bo's own momentum help in pull the zipper open and the denim down. As soon as he's exposed, there's the warmth and strength of Luke's hand palming him, and they're at a stalemate. Bo's not willing to move out from under that hand and Luke can't get the jeans any further down when his own knee is planted right between Bo's.

Frozen moment, at the starting line and waiting for the flag to drop, Luke's hand just idling along, Bo's engine revving. Crack! The headboard serves as a starting pistol, complaining about the way Bo's hand's been pulling on it. Luke goes the wrong direction, backing off in deference to a lifetime of being warned of dire penalties for breaking furniture. But Bo knows his own bed and the noises it makes, knows how much he paid for it and that it's not exactly an heirloom, knows that there are far worse things that a broken bed. Like Luke moving away from him. That's worse, but it's also temporary. The hungry way Luke watches him pull himself back to sit up against the headboard proves he'll be crawling right back up to Bo in no time at all. After, that is, he tugs at the ragged cuffs of well-worn blue jeans until they slide off Bo's hips—

"Wait," he says.

And down past his knees—

"Luke, wait."

But he's being soundly ignored until he makes a quick grab of the waist or his own jeans.

"Hold on, now," he counsels, laughter rolling out of his mouth; this particular pair is soft and comfortable and old enough that it might just rip under the strain of their little tug of war. He likes the pants, it would be a shame for them to get damaged beyond repair, but he can't help the giggles that escape his lips. It's been too long since he and Luke played rough and silly all at once.

Left hand busy clutching denim, he lets go with his right and feels his hind end slide across the mussed quilt and sheets, but his fingertips are nimble and find what he wants. They pull the cream out from the back pocket of his jeans, and he lets go of his handhold on them. Luke stumbles back to his feet when the resistance to his tugging is gone, but he holds Bo's jeans up like a trophy. One of his socks drops out of the leg and onto the floor; the other is still on his foot and he can't claim to care if it stays there, either.

"Get yours off," Bo commands, gets a raised eyebrow for his eagerness, but he shows Luke the hand cream as motivation. Must work, Luke's belt is jingling.

Bo settles against the headboard again, dropping the pinkish bottle next to his leg. Waits for Luke to disentangle himself from his jeans and boots, watches the man fold the clothes and lay them tidily on the dresser next to Bo's winning NASCAR cups. Laughs as Mr. Fussbudget pulls off his socks and lays them on top of the jeans, but anything like mirth dies in his throat when Luke looks at him again. Blue, suck a crazy blue shade to those eyes, studying the goofy way Bo's sitting against the headboard, hard and ready, and somehow approving. It's enough to make his stomach go for a crazy swim around his gut.

Crawling onto the bed that creaks under the shifting weight, thoughts and decisions in those eyes. About how they're going to do this and who is going to fit where and in the end Luke just straddles across Bo's straight legs and rests himself in his lap.

Kissing, sudden and deep, Bo's head tipping back to hit the wall because Luke's taller this way. Makes him wonder, for all of a second, if girls get cricks in their necks every time he kisses them. That thought, and any others that might have followed, gets banished by the way Luke's hand drags up his chest, hot and firm. His own hands start at Luke's bent knees and move up through the hairs there – the sort of thing no girl he's been with has ever had and it should be weird, maybe, except that it's too busy being right. Fingers trailing up over muscle that shifts when his touch is too light and tickling, around to the back where he takes firm hold of Luke's muscular backside. Rubbing and kneading, pulling Luke forward to rock against his belly, and the kiss breaks when Luke gasps.

"Like that," Bo teases. "Do you?"

"Shut up," the answer, but it's good natured. Luke slides back enough to give himself room to find the hand cream, to pop the top and squeeze some in his hand then wrap it around Bo. Slick stroke and Bo starts breathing slowly and carefully, telling himself that even if it has been a frustrating week of near-misses, he needs to hold on now. He can't give in to how good it feels just yet. "Like that, do you?" Luke taunts back.

"Yes," Bo admits, gets a grinning response.

"You'll like this better," Luke promises, as he raises himself high on his knees. Bo's hand guides and Luke sinks carefully down, slowing here or there to accommodate the stretch. Sweat pearls up across his nose first, then cheeks and shoulders and then Bo can't watch anymore, so he closes his eyes to wait until Luke manages to settle himself all the way down. A kiss brings him back to himself; he wonders why they've never done it this way before. It lets them see each other, touch each other more easily and naturally than when one of them is on his back. He tips his head into the kiss, lets his hands slide around Luke again to where they were a minute ago. A little squeeze and pressure, then Luke's lifting up on his knees and sinking back down again. Messy kiss tries to follow the movement but can't, they both need all their breath anyway. Panting and sweating and shifting—

"I love you," Bo breathes out on impulse. Thinks right afterward, that it might not have been the best idea; Luke's not all that great at handling blunt emotion.

Lips pressing over his again, even if it does make it hard to breathe. He might be getting thanked or told to shut up, but it doesn't matter because Luke lifts and lowers again, picking up the pace until—

* * *

There's that moment, when Bo gasps and lets out a small, shuddering cry. All thought stops then, even if he's not yet done and it takes a few rough strokes to get him there.

The world as he's known it has always been a rough and dizzying place, where things move fast and the motives of others are best questioned. People have come and gone from his life, and in the cruelest twist of fate, the good ones like his parents and Aunt Lavinia get taken from him while the less savory ones like Boss and Rosco and any manner of revenuers and bank robbers seem to proliferate at an alarming rate.

Thoughts and plans have swirled in his head since he was a tyke trying to outtalk a revenuer and keep him distracted just long enough for Jesse to dispose of any incriminating evidence. He cut his teeth on the grade school playground defending what little he had left in life: his pride, his cousins, his memories of his folks. There have not been too many moments of Luke's life when he has been at any kind of peace.

But then there's Bo, who pulls him back when he tries to get the crushing of weight of his body off him, who wraps his arms around him just to hold on a little longer. Who shifts with him, settling in close and warm when they've disentangled their legs and settled on their sides. Who rests his head on Luke's shoulder and murmurs something unintelligible, then closes his eyes, content as a puppy after a belly rub.

Through all the endless questions that have no good answers, all the thoughts he's ever had to think or plans he's had to scheme up just to have them fail, there's always been Bo. And whatever decisions they have in front of them, as complicated and unsatisfying as they may turn out to be, hardly matter. Not when it feels good and safe and peaceful, lying here next to Bo.


	30. Chapter 30

His pillow is moving. At first it's just a little twitch and shift, easily ignored. Easy to convince himself that he dreamed it and go right on back to snoozing along until it moves again. He punches it, not hard, just enough to try to make it fit his head better, and it downright moves. No mistaking his rebellious pillow for being anything other than disobedient and otherwise annoying. He tries to tell it to settle down and behave itself, but his tongue is slow and his brains seem to have been replaced with a thick sludge (and a mild ache).

There's a tickling itch on his cheek that he rubs at, then he shoves his pillow again for not staying still. What good is a bed to sleep in if its pillows are going to run rampant? Another tickle on his cheek and he gives up his tenuous hold on sleep. Opens his eyes to see that it's plenty dark in the room. Hot, which seems strange but he doesn't think too hard about it. Closes his eyes again, shuffles himself just a little bit. The pillow accommodates him, which is better. If a pillow's going to move, it should be helpful about it, not annoying.

Tickle on his face again; he ignores it. Figures he's overdue for a haircut anyway; if it's long enough to tickle his cheek and chin, a few inches of it have to go. But that can happen later; now it's time for sleep. He sighs out a breath and settles.

That's when his pillow laughs at him. Just a little vibration of a chuckle at first, a shivering that sets up against his body. Then there's a low echo that starts up in his ear, loud enough to create sympathetic vibrations in his cheek and jawbone. Up and down movement of his head and a series of ha-ha-ha-has echoing hollowly in his head.

That's it. Pillows shouldn't move, they shouldn't run rampant and they most certainly should not laugh at him. He opens his eyes, lifts his head and—

"Luke," he complains. Because, of course, if he were going to have a pillow with a mean streak and a mind all its own, it would be Luke. Has been Luke all along, blowing his hair into his face until it tickles against his cheekbone, moving and shifting and otherwise trying to wake him up when he'd much rather sleep.

More laughter, almost sounds like some sort of a reward. _Good job cousin, you figured me out._

"I was sleeping," he points out, quite reasonably. Not grouchy at all, of course not. He's too nice a guy for that.

In the pale orange glow cast by the digital alarm clock that hasn't worked in years, he can see Luke's face, how it mocks a pout. He offers up a light slap to Luke's ribs in retaliation.

"Dinner time, coz," Luke informs him.

Yeah, he could eat. He's even halfway glad to hear that the upcoming meal is dinner, not breakfast, since he hasn't got much of anything to eat by way of eggs or grits here. He and Luke did a decent job of emptying the place before they left, and while he's in no mood to go out shopping right now, he does know of a local pizzeria that delivers. They're also known locally for their garlic bread that almost measures up equally against Daisy's biscuits.

"Pepperoni or sausage?" he asks Luke, without making a move to sit up.

More laughing, which makes him lay his head back down against the chest that's not nearly soft enough to be called a pillow, and tighten his arms around Luke. Trying, through sheer laziness, to still the movement (or choke off the laughter, whichever way it happens to work out).

"Just no mushrooms," he adds. But this is Luke he's clinging to. That part didn't need to be said.

Though apparently some explanation is in order. Luke's only half-affectionate hand comes up to cup the top of his head, tugging until Bo is looking up at him. Nothing to see but the dim reflection of orange light in the wetness of his eyes, but he knows Luke's probably smirking at him, eyebrows up to ask him what on earth he's talking about. If only because that's the look he's seen from the guy most of the days of his life.

"Pizza," he clarifies. "From Carlo's Pizzeria on Main Street. They deliver. And they double up on the cheese."

"Sounds healthy," Luke remarks. "Especially when you don't want no vegetables on there."

Bo shrugs, pulls himself up on his elbows to look down that Luke, who's still flat on his back with fingers tangled in blonde hair. "We can have olives if you want."

Luke laughs, chest coming up, head tipping back, and just about roaring. Hard to know whether he's being made fun of or not, hard to care. Bo just nips at the neck that's laid so nicely bare in front of him.

But his stomach agrees with Luke's assessment about it being dinner time, so he doesn't start anything, just offers a parting kiss, then gets up to go in search of jeans in the dark. Finds a pair that turns out to be Luke's when he tries to pull them on, so he sheds them again and tosses them at his cousin, then finds his own. Pulls them up and zips, doesn't bother to button because he doesn't have to be properly dressed to make a phone call.

The rustle of Luke wrestling with his own clothes is behind him as he steps out of the bedroom, goose bumps rising on his skin. The artificial light from the parking lot illuminates his living area well enough to navigate, so he doesn't bother with the overhead, just makes a beeline for the thermostat. No point in freezing when he can afford to pay the bills to heat this place. Not like the farm where he would have had to start to wood stove or just bundle up and shiver.

He's in the still darkened kitchen, phone in hand and giving his order to a crack-voiced teen named Steve when Luke emerges from the bedroom, barefoot but otherwise reasonably dressed, hair flat in the back and pointing to the bathroom to indicate that's where he'll be for a bit if anyone needs him.

"But—" Bo interrupts his own deep discussion with Steve about onions or peppers to say.

"You got to go before," Luke informs him, and he can't argue with that. His cousin's been holding out since that last rest stop in Concord, several hours and many acrobatic moves ago.

Still, Bo's not at all surprised to hear, after he's worked out all the intimate details of their particular pizza order and is hanging up the phone, the hiss of water against porcelain. Luke's taking a shower.

Bo sets to picking through the paper bags of Daisy's goodies and tells himself that it doesn't mean anything. That they've had a long day, that sex is a sweaty, sticky affair, and that he's lucky that Luke stayed still enough to be mistaken for a pillow for what must have been hours. Even when they were hardly more than kids playing at sex in the grass, Luke would go off for a dip in the pond afterward, as long as it was warm enough to get away with it. A shower doesn't have to be a bad thing.

But by the time he's put away the jams and preserves, leaving the cobbler out for dessert later, and the pizza has been delivered by another of Carlo's Pizzeria's money-starved teens, Bo can't help but think that Luke's beeline for the shower can't be a good thing. He lays the pizza box and 64-ounce bottle of Coke on the island counter of his apartment and opens the smaller box that came with them. His stomach rumbles with nerves or hunger, so he breaks off the end of one of the Italian loaves and munches on it. Figures that makes it too obvious that he started eating without Luke, so he shoves the rest of it into his mouth, which leaves only three pieces still in the box. But his cousin's not familiar with Mooresville or Carlo's, and won't know what he has missed. He'll just think Bo's being generous when he lets Luke have two of the three.

He starts setting the table that's almost too small for two plates and two tumblers and an odd assortment of silverware. By the time he's pouring the Coke, Luke emerges, still toweling his wet hair. Looks at Bo or their dinner or the pitiful card table they're meant to eat off of and snorts.

Bo waits, with agitated anticipation, for him to say something snide or sarcastic or straight up mean, to declare that they're fools for ever getting together or coming back here or any number of objections that he can come up with. But nothing happens, other than Luke padding across the room barefoot, dropping the towel onto the back of a folding chair, then walking right up to Bo and tipping his head to offer a little kiss. Sweet, for all that it's hardly more than a peck.

"Garlic," Luke announces, licking his lips. There's that sarcastic tip of his chin Bo's been expecting, that silly half a smile that Luke offers up with he's too lazy to get both sides of his face involved. "You say grace before you snarfed that down?"

Not in the traditional sense, though he figures his worries over Luke's mood halfway count as prayers. God must think so, too; they were answered. His cousin may have honed his tongue to sharp perfection, may use those pretty blue eyes to all the wrong advantages, but he's not showing any signs of regretting anything at all about Bo.

Other than his silly attempts at domesticity, apparently. Luke pulls one slice of the pizza free from the rest of the pie and ignores the table and its unfortunate settings all together to go and settle on the couch. Reaching over to the left just long enough to flip on the light switch, then slouching low and blowing on the tip of the pizza before cramming some in his mouth.

It occurs to Bo to protest. To say they were raised better than this and that food shouldn't leave the kitchen – house rules for as far back as he can remember – but he's got no moral leg to stand on as pertains to such notions. At least, he thinks to himself, Luke didn't take his slice of pizza back into the bed with him, as Bo has been known to do on a lazy, tired night. And besides, he's just as happy to slurp his pizza down while sprawling on the couch. Only difference between him and Luke is, he brings his tumbler of coke with him. Which works out just fine, since Luke steals it from his hand to take a swig, then passes it back. It's companionable, nice, in a way that they haven't been since they were young enough to believe that wrestling each other to teenaged orgasm had nothing to do with the rest of their lives.

_I love you_ , he thinks. Doesn't dare say it out loud here in the flat light of the living space, where the refrigerator drones out its bored and toneless hum just a handful of steps away. "Pizza's too far away," he notes instead, now that his slice is gone.

"Coke, too," Luke points out, snatching the tumbler out of Bo's hand and draining the contents. A low chuckle to answer Bo's sputtering complaints, and Luke's up on his feet. The dining room table, such as it is, gets dragged one-handed across the room with the other, still full tumbler held safely in Luke's other hand, then he goes back for the pizza. Almost before Bo could have said lickety-split, they had themselves a lazy-man's smorgasbord sitting right in front of them, garlic bread and all.

"You should try that," Bo suggests, pointing, and Luke nods his agreement to that notion. But first he reaches across Bo to slap a button on the television and turn it on.

Howard Cosell fills the room with his inane nattering about the Finnish right wing, pushing-pushing-pushing for the goal, and it's more than Bo wants to listen to. Too much like hearing the loudspeakers at a motorplex announcing someone else's victory when he's been pushed off the track back in the twenty-third lap.

"Turn it to channel seven," he suggests. There's that show with the reasonably cool, black Firebird Trans Am on it. The dang thing talks, which is annoying enough to make Bo glad that the General doesn't do anything more than growl when he hits the gas, but other than that, it's a reasonably fun show to watch.

"It's the Olympics, Bo." As if watching anything else when there are men from Finland and who knows where else skating around in circles like unruly children in want of a whipping, all for the sake of slapping a stick onto a puck in hopes that it'll slide into a closely-guarded net.

"I know what it is," he mumbles, then grabs a piece of garlic bread to shove into his mouth and keep himself from spouting any other petulant-sounding words.

"You leave them other two pieces for me," Luke advises. "You already had your two."

"Change the channel," Bo retorts. "And you might just get your fair share of the food."

Is this, he wonders as they continue to trade off between stuffing food in their mouths and bickering over the television set, the way that Boss and Lulu spend their evenings? Mouths always open, fingers greasy, taste of tomato sauce when they lick the corner of their lips while the television blathers a background soundtrack of senseless noise? Maybe; Jesse and Lavinia certainly did their share of bickering, though never over the drone of a television set. Cassie and Lem are always going at each other, it seems, and maybe that's just the way married life goes.

Still, he figures, if he and Luke are going to play out some age-old ritual of marriage, they could choose a better one.

"You about done there?" he asks when Luke plops the last half slice of pizza back into the box, uneaten, and lets out a quiet burp that sounds very much like a man who has had his fill of food.

"Huh?" he gets asked, but he doesn't bother to explain, just stands and grabs Luke's hand firmly in his own to pull him to his feet. Doesn't quit there, keeps right pulling at him until they are tripping in the general direction of the bedroom. Luke reaches back to slap the button on the television, turning it off, then follows reasonably obediently behind him – even if his head is shaking in mock superiority – back into the bed. Funny how the head shaking stops when Luke realizes that it's his turn to take top.

* * *

Watching Bo scarf down food like Boss Hogg eating his first meal after a month-long diet is nothing new. The fact that it's dry cereal eaten straight from a bright blue box that announces that it doesn't cause cavities, but does have a prize inside, that's something that would never happen in Hazzard. It'd be far more normal to find Bo digging into the cobbler that still sits out on the kitchen counter. And even that would never happen until after chores, which would mean he'd be fully dressed instead of wearing just an ugly pair of gray sweatpants that only make it halfway down his calf.

"You'd best slow down," Luke advises. "Else you'll eat your own fingers."

An annoyed twitter passes through Bo's body, a tensing of one set of muscles after the other until he's standing upright instead of leaning on the counter. Habit; he never has liked being teased about the way he eats (which would make a saner man reconsider his pace), but he settles almost as quickly. Looks up from his deep study of children's cereal to meet Luke's eyes with a guilty little sigh.

"Sorry, you want some?" The too-bright box gets offered out to him, but he holds up a hand. He's not sure what's actually in there, but he can be relatively certain that the ratio of sugar to grain is high enough to give a healthy man the shakes. "We ain't got much here by way of food," is somewhere between an apology and a reproach. "The milk went sour when we was gone."

That, he figures, is why it's best stored in the goat, not the refrigerator.

"I reckon we need to go to the store and get some groceries, then. 'Less you reckon Daisy's gonna do it for us."

A longing look passes between them; those were better days. Before any of them left home, back when Rosco stood half a chance of catching them and was slightly mean, too. A real threat to them, and maybe he's had it wrong all these years. Maybe it wasn't the relationship between him and Bo, or the NASCAR offer that he finagled for his cousin that split the family apart. Maybe it was the Hazzard law's growing incompetence, their inability to be convincingly threatening and force the Dukes to stick together for survival.

"Later," Bo informs him, folding the cereal box closed and setting it on the counter next to the cobbler. "Right now I got to finish getting dressed," funny, Luke would have sworn that he hadn't even started, "and get to physical training or Butch is gonna make me real sorry for being late." Five quick steps and Bo's back in the bedroom, flinging the closet door open and rustling around in the mess there. Luke follows after him. "You seen my blue sweatshirt?"

No, he'd wager no one's seen it in months, if the mess of that closet is any indication.

"Does this mean you plan to stay here, then? You made up your mind?"

Bo stops digging, and though he's facing away from Luke, the way his shoulders lift then drop pretty much tells the tale of a sigh.

"No, but," he looks over his shoulder, his hair a mess around his face, and Luke would swear he was fifteen again. Young and caught playing hooky from school with no clever explanations for his behavior. "Until we do decide what we're going to do, I got to go to work."

_("Um, listen, Uncle Jesse, uh, I gotta run." The phone had barely made it to the cradle and already Bo was hem-hawing about leaving. He hadn't tried to keep any of them from overhearing the conversation or the little jab about how the phone hadn't interrupted anything more than a_ friendly _little family discussion, which left them without any doubt that Bo was about to run off with Diane._

" _Right now?" Hardly a half hour after they'd last seen the manipulative – well, if she were still alive, Aunt Lavinia would have washed out his mouth for the words he was thinking. Still, Daisy shouldn't have been surprised. Bo had never been known to have any willpower at all when it came to girls. Shoot, she and Luke were lucky he came home with them at all, instead of staying at the fairgrounds, marking his territory. "After Uncle Jesse spent all morning cooking up these victuals for you? Bo—"_

" _Daisy, I know, but, well listen, Uncle Jesse, I wouldn't do nothing to hurt you but this here's business."_

" _Business!" Business, indeed. The kind that started with a hot shot carnival owner dismissing Luke's claim on Bo with a sneer and words like 'babysitter,' and ended with Bo breaking his neck over a stupid car stunt. "Since when you been so all-fired anxious to go to work?"_

_Getting told to simmer down by Jesse hadn't done a thing for Luke's temperament or made him go any easier on Bo after the fact, and Bo had marched out with cheerful determination to get himself killed.)_

"Here," he says, reaching into Bo's closet and pulling out the first blue thing he sees. Jeans, nope. "I'll help."

A tee shirt and green sweat shirt get found and deemed acceptable, one hopping foot then the other gets a sock pulled up over it, then gets stabbed into a pair of sneakers that don't even get untied.

"You know I can't come with you, right?" Luke counsels, as Bo wiggles his left foot in an attempt to get it fully seated in the shoe. "I can't go until I'm ready to sign that contract. And signing that contract keeps me here for a year."

Bo stops his agitating for a couple of heartbeats, looking Luke in the eye, then lets out a breath. "I reckon so. I'm sorry," he offers.

Luke's hand finds the back of Bo's head, bringing him close for a quick kiss, just like Lavinia used to when Jesse went off to the stills. "It'll be okay," he assures him, as he ruffles blonde curls into some approximation of tidiness, or at least deliberate untidiness. Not looking like he just rolled out of his lover's bed, anyway. Just like Lavinia used to lick her fingers and pat at Jesse's hair when it wanted to fly away in the morning wind.

_Have a good day_. He doesn't say it, thinks it, remembers it as yet a third thing that would have passed from Lavinia to Jesse. Wonders, as Bo makes his pouting way toward the front door, when he became someone's housewife.

The feeling doesn't get any better when he settles down in front of the television with a fork in his hand and a tin of cobbler on his lap for breakfast.

* * *

"Hi, honey." Oh, but it's delivered with a sardonic little twist of Luke's lips. Not a genuine endearment at all. "How was your day?"

_Long_ , he wants to say, but it wasn't the half of what a harvest or planting day would have been, or even those days the two of them spent on the run from Rosco and Boss, him driving in wild circles and figure eights while Luke schemed up plan after plan until one of them worked.

But the day dragged out anyway. After a week of digging ditches and getting blisters, looking into Jesse's scolding but loving eyes, cruising empty roads in search of nothing more important than a little fun, it was utterly unsatisfying to test his strength against weight machines and drive controlled practice laps around a track. And the protein shakes that make up most of his nutrition when he's in training have nothing on Daisy's fried chicken.

Back in 1970, before legal beer, before girls, there was the lone pinball machine at the Boar's Nest. He had barely hit double digits and was hardly tall enough to see all the bumpers and flippers, but he'd loved the lights, the color and the cascading music. Here and there, people would give the grinning blonde boy with the hopeful blue eyes a quarter and send him off to play. Once he got a taste and started to cultivate a feel for just when to tap the flippers, he made it his mission to do as many odd jobs as necessary to earn a whole roll or quarters. Took quite a bit of hard work and willpower, not to mention a fair amount of begging, to earn his quarters then to get Uncle Jesse to take him to the roadhouse on one of his guardian's checker tournament afternoons, but he managed it. All but salivated when he stuck his first quarter in and the music started up, the flashing lights reflecting off the shiny surface of the ball, his hands slapping at the sides of the machine with satisfying thuds.

The first three quarters went by quickly and by the sixth he'd managed to score within the top ten since the machine had first been plugged in, and he got to slap the buttons on the side until he'd managed to get his initials entered into the thing for all future players to see.

But after the eighth game, the music started to annoy him, and by the tenth he wasn't sure he wanted to drop another quarter in. Somewhere around what should have been the fifteenth he wandered over the Jesse's table to beg to be taken home, but the oldster was in the middle of a game and made him wait. Eventually he wound up outside, sitting on the old combine that had parked in front of the building as some version of a decoration (or had just been abandoned there, no one knew for sure), sunning himself and wishing he was sitting on the bank of a pond with Luke, fishing line dropped in the water, until Sheriff Coltrane came along and shooed him off, muttering mean things under his breath about unwanted little boys.

Today at the track was like that, all over again. Stuck somewhere he thought he wanted to be, only to find he wished he could be wherever Luke was, doing whatever Luke was doing. He wants to go back to Hazzard, he thinks, but then—

"Fine, sweetheart," he answers back. A silly grin spreads across his face at the ridiculousness of the words. Feels good to laugh. "What did you whip me up for dinner?"

"Well, unless you want me to take off my belt," maybe he dos and maybe he doesn't. Depends on whether that 'whipping up' is going to be a touch too literal for Bo's tastes or whether they're going to skip the meal and head for the bedroom. (And as much as that notion appeals to him, he's dang hungry, too.) "And fry it up in a pan, I reckon we need to go out and buy us some groceries, first."

Bo makes a face that explains just how little he's interested in that.

"No, we ain't getting another pizza," Luke scolds before he can even suggest it. Which he didn't plan to do anyway, but there's a takeout sandwich place a few blocks over on—"I reckon if you'd left me the General, you wouldn't have to worry about this now." It's said lightly, a tease, but it makes plenty clear that Luke didn't exactly enjoy his day, either.

"If you take me to work tomorrow, you can have him," Bo offers.

Luke's raised eyebrow asks him just how long he plans to keep going through his NASCAR routine without making a decision about whether or not they're committing to the team. He knows it's up to him; he's the one with the bright future on the track after all. But he halfway wishes Luke would just make the decision for them anyway.

"All right," is all Luke has to say on the matter.

* * *

He's a fool, he figures, to have thought that three years on his own would have made his cousin a more skilled cook than he is. Neither of them knows a whole heck of a lot, but Luke can at least manage a stew from chunked beef or chicken, vegetables and a canned broth. All Bo wanted to buy from the store were nearly unidentifiable frozen things (that might have included chicken parts) in glossy boxes. The sort that can be heated in the oven and after a mere half hours will be transformed into inedible slop. No better than the C-Rats Luke ate in the military, and why would a man ever _choose_ to eat that badly? (Because he found himself alone, in an unfamiliar city, at the age of twenty. With a racing contract and a moonshine runner's talent behind the wheel, but no other discernable skills.) Which leaves Luke to continue being the housewife, at least until he's got the two of them reasonably well fed. After that he settles down in front of the television with Bo, one newly-purchased bottle of beer in each of their hands. At that point they become a pair of loose-mannered boys that would get their cousin Daisy swatting the tops of their heads.

He wonders, as they take turns reaching for the television knob to change channels, bickering back and forth about Olympics and some dumb show that Bo figures would be better to watch, what his cousin has done with his evenings in the three years he lived here on his own.

Other than girls, that is. Because he doesn't want to think too hard about that.

"You about done with that?" he asks, and Bo hands over his empty beer bottle without even moving out of his slouch.

"Thanks," he mumbles when Luke takes it from him.

Funny how he's not as grateful when Luke just puts the bottles on the table that they dragged over to eat off of again tonight, then stands and slaps the television off.

"Hey," comes the complaint, but Luke's not too worried about it. He just mocks a pout back and pulls all the snaps on his shirt open with one go.

Off to the bedroom, and Bo's close enough behind to bump into him when he stops just long enough to get the door open. It's a bit early to be going to bed, but they make good use of the time between getting into the room and finally falling asleep.

"You're too old to be going at it that hard," Bo informs him after the first time, which only forces him to prove that he can handle as much as Bo wants to dish out.

Neither of them is wearing anything at all, much less a watch, when they collapse into a sweaty, exhausted heap in the middle of the bed, but Luke would guess it's after midnight.

"Need to get more hand cream," Bo mumbles into a yawn, and Luke tightens his hold around him in the pitch dark room, stroking a hand along his ribs until his breathing becomes deep and even. The last thing Luke remembers is thinking that he may not be entirely happy in Mooresville right now, but at least the nights are a lot better than the days.

He wakes suddenly with the instincts of a Marine or a moonshine runner; either way, he knows that something is wrong. Aside, that is, from the fact that the brightness squeezing around the edge of the drawn blinds is enough to hurt his eyes.

Then he hears it again, the thing that woke him. A metallic rattle, and he's trying to push himself up but there's a dead weight on his chest. Only for a moment, then there's scrambling, blonde hair in his face, big knees and elbows everywhere, and something smacks him in the chin hard enough to split his lip against his teeth.

"Bo," he hisses, because whatever it is (Rosco? That's the first irrational thought he's got on the subject, followed by a bunch more that include Boss, a fox raiding the henhouse, the North Vietnamese and rogue bear), they're both going to need to be calm (and dressed, where are his clothes?) and rational to fight it. Plus, he'd like to have all his parts intact. He grabs an arm just above the elbow, and holds on.

"Luke," is almost a whine. Quiet, though; whatever's out there, Bo recognizes the wisdom in sneaking up on whoever might be prowling his kitchen in broad daylight. "Let go."

"Be careful," he whispers back, and he means both about not landing some bony part of himself into one of Luke's more sensitive areas, and in dealing with whatever's out there.

Bo backs away like he can't be shed of Luke nearly quickly enough, his feet finding carpeted floor, then padding over to the closet. Sweatpants get pulled on while Luke rolls over to reach silently to the floor for his own jeans. The closet door gets closed with a careless thud that makes Luke want to jump up too late and put a muffling hand up against it, but he winds up ducking lower instead, trying to disappear under the sheets as Bo throws the bedroom door wide, then steps through.

"Mr. Duke," comes a female voice from somewhere else in the apartment. "You scared me!"

Oh, sure, she's scared. Luke would bet her heart hasn't spent the last ten second trying to escape out her mouth. He swallows deeply and flattens himself even further into the bed, trying to draw anything other than a shaky, panting breath, and failing.

"Hi, Mathilda," Bo greets with a manic clown's cheer. His smile is probably wide enough to be painted on, too, but Luke can't see anything more than the curls at the back of his head that tell tales of sex. "Sorry, I didn't mean to spook you. I must've overslept. My cousin's staying with me." Keeping me up half the night having sex, just in case you were wondering. "He's ah, still asleep." Lightning might just come flying out of the sky at him for lying. Luke closes his eyes so his cousin is only half a risk (or maybe with a child's belief that if his eyes are closed, he has disappeared) and tries sending mental telepathy to Bo. Close the door, close the door, close the door, but as usual, his cousin's not listening to him. "He slept on the floor." There's nothing, Luke figures, that's going to keep his cousin from being struck by lightning now. Luke can only hope that it's close enough to take him, too, so that his death is from something quick instead of from slow mortification.

Mathilda, who probably had no questions whatsoever about where Luke slept until Bo made her start thinking about it, announces that she can leave and come back later if he wants, but Bo (idiot) tells her it's fine, he's got to get to work anyway (blonde idiot). If she'll just stick to the kitchen for now, he'll be dressed and on his way in about five minutes (super blonde idiot). And oh, she should probably wait until his floor-sleeping cousin wakes up (lying super blonde idiot) to clean the bedroom (lazy, lying super blonde idiot).

There's a flurry of oh, that's fine, sure thing Mr. Dukes, and then, finally, Bo comes back into the room and closes the door behind him.

"Hi Luke," he says with that same sugary cheer that he unleashed on his housekeeper. Just as seasick green as Luke figured it to be, and the poor boy's sweating like it's mid-July. A little pasty, just like he always got when tap dancing around a revenuer's prying questions. "I'm late for training. And Mathilda's out there." How helpful of Bo to enlighten him, just in case he really was asleep on the floor. Luke knows nothing about the woman other than her name, but he reckons they may just get to know each other real well in a minute here. "I'm late," he repeats, heading for the closet again.

"Bo, hang on," he says. Quietly, of course, because he's supposed to be sleeping (on the floor, no less) but his cousin is far too manic to make any sense. Right now he's tossing clean clothes and dirty out of the closet in equal measure. (And this is why Mathilda cleans the bedroom, no doubt.) "Cousin." He's on his feet, grabbing for Bo's wrist, but he gets shaken off.

"I've got to go, Luke."

For about half a second, or maybe even shorter than that, he wonders just how terrible it would be if Mathilda found him now, fully naked and trying to hold onto some part of a nearly-as-naked Bo. Would she scream or scold or quit on the spot – he realizes it doesn't matter. She works for some of Bo's friends, too, which is how she even came to be hired to clean this apartment. And Itchy Itzkowitz may be a fun-loving, easy-going sort of a guy, but he's not likely to take too kindly to finding out that Bo's been sharing a bed with Luke. (Now sharing a bed with Daisy, would probably earn him congratulations all around.)

"All right," Luke agrees, giving up on trying to calm him or otherwise get him to make any manner of sense. "I'll drive you."

"Luke, you can't!" is just sheer panic and all the more reason Luke needs to drive. He reaches down to pull his jeans out of the ever-growing pile of Bo's discarded clothes.

"There," Luke points at one of the items Bo just tossed onto the floor in front of him. "There's a sweatshirt. Now you just got to find a tee shirt." Meanwhile Luke's pulling his own jeans up while keeping an eye on yesterday's blue shirt with clothes piling on top of it like so many snowflakes in a blizzard. He's going to need that in a minute.

Bo's trying to put on the sweatshirt without a tee shirt underneath, which he'll regret when he gets to the gym. Luke grabs hold of the sweatshirt to stop him, then puts a hand on his shoulder. Bo makes to shrug away, but Luke tightens his grip.

"Bo," he says, gets to thinking his cousin's really out of practice for getting caught doing something clandestine, then he realizes that robbing the bank (or unrobbing it, but that's quibbling) is a lot easier to explain than his relationship with Luke. This thing between them is more dangerous than any stunt they've pulled to keep themselves out of prison. He offers up a little squeeze to Bo's hard shoulder. "It's going to be okay," he says.

A big, shuddering sigh, a brave nod, and then Bo gets back to chasing down clothes that he can wear throughout his daily routine. "Not if I don't get to Butch double-quick. He's gonna make me—" do all manner of extra exercises that Luke would rather not hear about, at least as long as he's not employed by the Reed team and has no say in the matter.

Luke throws his shirt over his shoulders, doesn't bother buttoning it. Whoever this Mathilda is, he doesn't figure that she'll consider his bare chest all that scandalous. Heck, a Hazzard woman – regardless of age or marital status – thrills at the opportunity.

"Don't worry, coz," he reminds him as he bends to pick up his boots that are just about drowning in the mess on the floor. "We got the General. And me behind the wheel. Won't take us but a second to get there."

As he heads for the bedroom door he can tell Bo has recovered from his shock when he snorts derisively about Luke's driving skills.


	31. Chapter 31

_Bo, it's going to be okay._

How many times has Luke said that to him, and how many times has it been true? Or how many times has Luke made it true – seems like there's always a gap between the saying and the truth, a an uncomfortable minute or hour or series of days where Luke inserts himself wherever he has to until things really are okay again.

But this isn't some sort of high school mischief or homegrown, but ultimately harmless, threat from Boss and Rosco. This is the life he has lived for over three years now, deliberately outside of Luke's sphere of influence. It's doing squat thrusts and leg lifts until he's loose limbed and spastic, it's protein shakes so chalky he'd swear they stick to his tongue and throat and esophagus for hours until it's time for the next one. It's the pit crew for his car, quiet and tense, studying him when they think he's not looking, it's Chief Meade patting him on the shoulder like Jesse always did after chewing him out. _You learned your lesson, boy, didn't you?_

"Doug wants to see you at three," is like being sent to the principal's office, but not right away. First he has to drive a few hours' worth of laps and try to think up some excuse for how late he was this morning. Which wasn't a whole lot later than he's been on other days, at least he didn't think so. But apparently he crossed some invisible line and made himself a blip on Doug Reed's scolding radar.

And Luke drove away from him in the General this morning, which means there's no escaping.

His lap work is sloppy, his hands around the steering wheel alternately clenching and slipping. The car feels mean under the seat of his coveralls, like it has intentions of its own that don't necessarily include staying within the concrete walls that ring the track. Maybe it has a death wish or just wants to escape as badly as Bo does.

Which is silly. Dukes don't run; that's been said to him, and by him, almost as many times as Luke's promises of everything being okay. It's just that he's a man of action, not someone who takes kindly to cooling his heels for a few hours before being able to face ugly or difficult situations.

Then again, as time ticks closer to three o'clock, and he feels the warm tightness in his chest that might or might not be his last protein shake getting ready to make a spectacular reappearance, he finds himself childishly wishing that time would slow down, stop, reverse. That he could be back in his bed with Luke, and he'd wake up early this time. Not so much to get to work on time, necessarily, as to enjoy a few moments of being held. For all the stupid and not-so-stupid arguments they've had since this whole thing began, one thing has stayed constant. Luke likes to hold him, and he likes to be held.

And it sure would be nice to have Luke's arm around him when the driving has to pause so he can get out of the car and climb up the endless stairs to Doug Reed's office. He plasters on his best smile and works hard at mustering all the charm he's used to get himself out of trouble his whole life. Cheryl, in the outer office, grins right back at him and blushes up a pretty pink under all her freckles. Which means that by the time he's ushered into Doug Reed's inner office his smile's got a lot more wattage to it. Doug Reed greets him cordially enough, with a hearty handshake, and he figures that maybe he ought to kick himself for wasting any time at all worrying.

"Sorry I was late this morning," he starts right out. If there's one thing he learned growing up with Jesse Duke, it's that admitting to the truth on the front end decreases the number of licks on the hind end. "I reckon I overslept." _It won't happen again_ , he almost adds but then again, that's a promise he can't make and doesn't even want to. Sleeping in with Luke seems like a commendable activity that he would like to engage in as often as his early-rising cousin will allow.

"Were you late this morning?" Well, he always has been a fool. Sometimes, Luke would inform him when they were both standing through dinner with warm, red hind ends, he confessed to all the wrong things. Just because he'd done a thing didn't mean Jesse had to hear about it. "Maybe you should invest in an alarm clock." Maybe so; the last one he bought was that fancy digital one in his bedroom with the gears and little plastic panels that clicked as they flipped from one number to the next, until it started telling the wrong time, then no time at all. For over a year now it's been more of a night light than a clock.

He didn't miss it when it quit working, at least not mostly. He had stopped sleeping heavily like he used to when he was younger and he was usually up long before he needed to be anywhere, even after a late night. But now that he's spending his nights in the same space with Luke he reckons he might just get accused of being able to sleep through a tornado again.

"Yes, sir," he says, "I reckon I might." Just to be agreeable.

Reed indicates a chair for him to settle into, dispelling any ridiculous hopes that he might have had that the conversation can end here and he can go about his day. Two more hours before Luke's scheduled to meet him on the corner of Statesville Highway and Shepherdsville Road, but first he's going to have to figure out exactly how much trouble he's in and what it's going to take to get out of it.

"How was your vacation?"

"It was," difficult and frustrating, really. Telling Jesse, watching his family go miserably through the days as they each sorted through their reactions, sleepless nights, no real privacy, Luke's ex-fiancée asking him awkward questions. "Nice," he finishes, because it was that, too. "To spend time with my family and friends, on the farm."

"And what about Luke? Did he have a nice time?"

No, but old Doug shouldn't take that too personally. Luke never has a nice time. He has a very, very serious time, always.

"It ain't exactly a vacation for Luke to be in Hazzard."

"No, I suppose not," his boss agrees. "Marshall Meade used to say, when you first joined the team, that maybe you were too young. Oh, you were a hell of a driver," he explains when Bo opens his mouth to – what? Defend his twenty-year-old self? Half the time he thinks he was too young to have left home then, too. (And then he reminds himself that Luke left home before he'd quite turned eighteen, and went to the other side of the world. Bo just moved up one state.) "But it was hard to get you to focus on your driving. You were too easily distracted. He said you talked about Hazzard and some fella named Luke so much, he figured you'd be gone before that first season was through." Yeah, he reckons he halfway thought he'd leave that quickly, too. "Now that you've been home a few times in the past six months, and your cousin Luke's come out here to spend time with you, it seems like things have changed again. Like having Luke here distracts you."

"No, it ain't that." Except for the fact that it's exactly that. "It's just, we're getting used to living together again."

"I haven't seen Luke since you got back," Reed points out. "I wasn't sure he came back with you."

"Oh, yes sir, he did." His fingers start itching compulsively at the coveralls he's wearing. Plain white that might just belong on a painter, except they're what all the Reed team drivers wear to practice. In a race they're in bright yellow, but those suits are like their Sunday best. They only get worn when everything's all formal and their neighbors' eyes are on them. Doesn't matter whether it's his good coveralls or these practice ones, though. If he's in the car he doesn't even notice he's wearing them. As soon as he's out they start to itch and pull and otherwise make him want to strip them off. But he can't so he just picks at them and wishes he were just about anywhere else.

"Well, that's good." Doug Reed gets up from his own luxurious swivel chair behind his spotless desk. Bo's not sure why NASCAR team owner even needs a desk, honestly. It's not like being a teacher, he doesn't need it to hold books. When it comes right down to it, he's not entirely sure what Doug does, other than have a lot of money and sometimes give pep talks or dressings-down, and there's not a lot of paperwork involved in either of those. Maybe, like Boss Hogg, he uses it to rest his calculator when tallying profits. "I thought I would have seen him by now. I did want to give him time to think about the offer we made, but as you know, the season's getting ready to start in another couple of weeks. Working a new person into the chain of command is going to take some time."

"Yes, sir, I imagine so."

"Then you'll talk to him for me?" The man walks around the front of his desk to sit on top. As always, he's dressed in light colored pants and a button down shirt, a loose and comfortable-looking jacket without a tie, caught somewhere between formal and casual. When he crosses one knee over the other it exposes the laziest thing about him: bare ankles and heavily worn loafers with soles that slope unevenly toward the outsides of his feet.

"Talk to him?"

Meanwhile, Bo's considering stripping down to nothing and scratching everywhere it itches. Oh, sure, it would probably get Doug hustling to the intercom on his desk (and maybe that's why he has a desk? A place to put an intercom?) to buzz Cheryl and ask her to call the police or the local mental hospital, but it would most likely get him out of this conversation, out of making promises that he's not sure he's ready to make.

"Listen, Bo. You've been a loyal driver for us and never shown any inclination to jump teams. We like you and it seems like you like us."

"Well, yes sir." He likes them all a great deal, and halfway figures they're responsible for keeping him going these past three years.

"Good," Reed says, sliding off the desk again to come over and pat Bo's shoulder, which only makes it itch more. "Then you'll talk to him."

"Yes sir, I will. But what did you want me to talk to him about?"

Doug Reed smiles, shakes his head. "Silly me," he says, but he's studying Bo carefully. It's kind of the way Luke looks at him when he's pretending to check whether Bo's had a previously undiagnosed brain injury or is just his usual blonde self. "I thought I'd been clear. About his intentions. We know you're staying with us." Well, that's more than Bo knows. "What we don't know is whether Luke's going to come work with us or not."

Which means that the team knows all the wrong things, really. About whose shoulders the decision rests on and how hard it's been and—

"I know Luke ain't got no intentions of working for no other team," he assures his boss. Reed takes a step back and offers up his right hand for the shaking. Apparently it's time for Bo to go now.

"That's good," he says as Bo stands and offers out his own right hand. "Now we just need to know whether he intends to work for us."

* * *

"What are you doing here?" It is, he realizes a second to late, not the best way to greet a man whose hair sticks to his forehead with sweat, whose face is a flushed pink and whose eyes are more interested in looking at the blue-carpeted floor than Luke's face. Meanwhile, Luke stands in the kitchen where he has spent the better part of his day, hands on hips and considering whether the counter has always been off-white or whether a good dose of bleach would brighten it up.

"Itchy gave me a ride," Bo explains with a flapping hand that dismisses any further discussion on the matter. Other than to add, "I got done early," then flop on the couch.

He could have called. Surely Bo knows his own phone number, and it's only a five minute drive to the corner where they agreed to meet.

"All right." Then again, maybe Luke's just a little touchy, maybe it's been another day spent as a useless housewife, cleaning up after the maid and burning the food. And if those magazines Daisy's been reading since she was fourteen are right, Luke should have met his downtrodden lover in nothing but a sheer and frilly little apron, with a martini in hand.

Except Bo doesn't own an apron, frilly or otherwise, and Luke couldn't make a martini if his life depended on it.

"You wanna go out for a beer?" is about the best he can offer. The look he gets through the ragged stands of blonde asks him if he's insane. "And a hamburger?" he adds, because really, what might be more insane than going out is staying in and heating some canned soup, which is questionably within his skill set. Sometimes, and he can't swear that he understands how, liquids betray all his understanding of physical states and burn when he looks away for just a moment.

"No," Bo answers and somehow its sounds like an accusation. Like Luke should know better than to suggest such a fool thing. "We ain't going nowhere."

"All right." Luke leans his hip against the kitchen counter, tucks his fingertips into his back pockets, and looks across the open space to watch Bo sit on the couch and pout.

"And quit that, too," he adds, petulantly.

"What?"

"Saying all right like that."

Luke laughs. He tries not to, kind of chokes it back, but of course Bo can easily guess what it is. Especially when the sound makes it into his next word. "Okay?" he tries instead. Bo has no idea how much he resembles his own four-year-old self right now. Mad in an utterly adorable way.

The cuteness lasts about as long as it used to back then, too. "Luke!" he snaps, "quit it." At least he's outgrown that high pitched scream he used to let out when his tolerance had been exceeded. And he got trained out of biting and scratching, too. "Quit patronizing or looking after me or whatever it is you think you're doing. I don't need you to take care of me."

He shrugs, because he's not, as far as he can tell, supposed to speak. He's not very practiced at this housewife thing, or at dealing with a grumpy shift-worker. Farmers just keep on tilling and planting until they are too tired to fight with each other, then they stumble into the house and fall asleep wherever they land.

Bo doesn't need Luke to take care of him – it's probably true, anyway, give or take the fact that Luke always did. But Bo's been living here now for a few years and he seems to have done all right for himself. He's got a roof over his head, four thin walls around him and a maid to keep it clean. He's got most of his meals provided for by an employer who wants to keep him lean and healthy, he's got a trainer to make sure he does what he's supposed to, he's got friends that make sure he gets home when they've been out carousing. Luke doesn't need to look after him; Bo has proven that he can get others to do it instead.

"And quit doing that, too." _What?_ he asks with just a lift of his eyebrows, trying to straighten out the corner of his mouth that keeps trying to quirk up. It's funny, and Bo would be laughing out loud (and risking a frying-pan braining) if it were Daisy spouting off all this irrationality. "Accommodating me like I'm some kind of kid that you have to be gentle with. Stop," and he stands up because in all their lives the one thing Bo has ever had over him (and that much only in the past half-dozen years or so) is height. "Sending me off to work with a kiss and staying home, stop acting like you're some kind of a—" _saint_ , they both know that's what Bo wants to say. "Great guy that's just waiting for his baby cousin to decide what he wants to do. You think that coming back here and getting together with me after last time," yeah, this has suddenly started to feel an awful lot like the last time they fought in this apartment. "That going home and telling Jesse, then coming back here with me without saying a word about what you want makes you brave, and self-sacrificing, right? Well it doesn't. Do you want to know what it makes you?" No, but he's pretty sure that Bo and his pointing finger, which have been steadily coming toward him and are just about close enough to touch now, are going to tell him anyway. "You're still the same coward you ever were."

* * *

That, some part of his mind where his thoughts aren't quite so red hot with anger points out to him, might not have been the best thing to say. Not because of the way Luke shoulders tense when he pulls his hands out of his back pockets to fold his arms across his chest, and not because of the way his eyebrows level out, and not even because of the way Luke's eyes study him, but because of the way his lips flatten tight against one another, the way his legs cross to mirror his arms.

Luke, apparently, is not willing to participate in this conversation.

Not much, anyway. "You're the one with the driving contract and the promising future." And that, apparently, is all Luke plans to say about that. He's not even looking at Bo anymore; his eyes are fixed out the bay window where the clouds over Lake Norman hang mean and low.

"A contract you got me," Bo points out, because Luke can't wash his hands of this mess. He can't keep paving Bo's path for him, then acting like Bo's a jerk for following right along that path. "A life you chose for me."

"I didn't choose nothing." And there, Luke's back with him, those eyes slightly squinted and looking at him hard, dark brows over them arched up and making an ugly mess of wrinkles on his forehead. Halfway has Bo wishing he'd go back to giving his mean looks to the darkening sky.

"Of course you did." Of all things to be arguing about, this one seems like the most ridiculous. They both know exactly what happened. "You got Dave Mays to come scout me, you got the contract for me, you did everything except pack my bags." There's a laugh caught up in those last words that's more about absurdity than amusement. Bo plants both hands on his hips and waits for whatever brilliance Luke's about to come out with.

"And why," Luke asks without bothering to move anything other than his mouth. Unflapped by anything Bo might have to say to him. "Do you reckon I didn't pack for you?"

"I don't know, Luke." Sometimes Bo wishes he could mirror that calm, as laced with ice as it is. "I reckon you would figure you were better than me at it." But he can't, his blood runs far too hot for that. "Ain't that one of them things they taught you when you ran off to the Marines? How to pack a bag real good?"

He only halfway knows why this is a fight. It's not exactly what he meant to have happen when he got home. Doug Reed left his mind spinning and his only clear thought in all of that was that when he got home, Luke would know what to do.

And the truth is, he probably does. But as always, getting him to say what he thinks or what he wants is like using bare hands to pry off a stuck hubcap. Bloody knuckles and bruised fingers and nothing ever gets solved or even close no matter how much you beat yourself up. Madder and madder at what's not working and by the time Bo pulls out snarky words about the Marines, he knows there's no rescuing anything at all. He's hit Luke below the belt and all he can do now is wait for the retaliation.

And he should have remembered that the main thing the Marines taught Luke was how to kill a man. (Probably painfully.)

"I didn't pack your bags," funny how it looks like Luke has to unclench the muscles in his jaw enough to talk. It's a wonder the man still has teeth, the way he to grinds them together when he gets mad. "Because I didn't really figure you'd leave."

"Didn't figure I'd leave?" So much for him not wanting this to be a fight. His finger's jabbing into Luke's chest, he's leaning forward and close enough that Luke must feel his breath almost as well as he can hear his words. "Hell, you're the one that sent me away!" His face, he figures, is splotching up in red patches; it's warm enough to be on fire.

"I didn't send you nowheres." Luke's angry as a rattler whose den's been trampled, but he keeps his cool. He's not even leaning forward, just standing there all folded up without even the smallest bit of extra moisture in the icy blue of his eyes. Makes Bo all the madder, makes his ears ring, his face go pink, his voice crack and his eyes start figuring this would be a great time to water. All the things he's ever hated about himself – and Luke's not a big fan of any of them either. _Quit being so sensitive Bo_ , as if Luke saying that has ever made his tears magically dry up. "I just gave you a choice. Tell Jesse or go off to NASCAR. I ain't the one who ran off."

"Ran off?" Ran off? Who the hell _ran off_? Luke ran off once, though he made it look like some sort of patriotism, like he was fulfilling some sort of civic duty. "I didn't run. And you didn't want to tell Jesse no more than I did."

* * *

Bo is – idiot is too nice a word. Or too innocent. An idiot can't help what he is. Bo is more like a deliberate fool, a purposeful dunce, a lazy, selfish revisionist brat who remembers events all wrong and then again—

He's right. Luke wasn't in a hurry to tell Jesse back then. Just like he wasn't in a hurry to tell him last week, but he did it anyway because it was the right thing to do. Because he and Bo are in a committed relationship and his uncle needs to know that, and the only thing missing back then was Bo's commitment.

He runs one hand up through his hair like maybe he can stimulate his brain that way, scratch some logic to life that Bo will understand.

"Wait," Bo says, his finger thumping into Luke's breastbone like an echo of the word. Not meanly, more like just trying to pin whatever thought his mind is tracking right there long enough for him to find a way to articulate it. "You really thought I wouldn't go?"

"I didn't say that." Did he? He doesn't think so. "I said you wasn't supposed to go." He'd hoped, maybe, but never really let himself think it.

"So you went and got me a test drive with Dave Mays—"

"Cale done that." Bo waves a hand through the air like that's immaterial. Luke's willing to concede the unspoken point, if only because it gets that pointy finger off his chest and away from him entirely.

Not that Bo's settling down, exactly. More like he's gone from straight-up angry to something more like incredulously furious. Squinting eyes, tilting head and all.

"You got Cale to get me a test drive, you made sure the contract was good, you done all kinds of things behind my back to get me all set up with Reed, and I wasn't supposed to go?"

Luke shrugs. It's not a good enough answer; Uncle Jesse drilled that knowledge into him back when he was a derelict eight-year-old, unwilling to admit to having leveled L.B. Davenport on the playground, even if the brat had deserved it. Still, he's inclined to give it a try; Bo's bigger than Jesse, but he doesn't have nearly as mean a whipping arm. As to his right hook, Luke's willing to bet he won't use it when it's his own furniture that's likely to be the worse for wear.

Bo plants his hands on his hips, looking frighteningly like Daisy in a tizzy. Toe not quite tapping, but he's staring at Luke with that same sort of disgusted anticipation. Waiting for an answer he's pretty sure he doesn't want to hear. And Luke doesn't want to say it, which means they're in agreement for quite possibly the first time since Bo stormed in here this afternoon.

"I wasn't supposed to go?" Bo prompts. This, apparently, is not going to be let go.

Another sigh, his arms folded tightly across his chest again. Out the window, he can see the dusk closing in as tightly over the lake as this discussion is over him.

"You was supposed to want to stay with me, even if it meant facing Jesse. You was supposed to choose me."

Bo's shaking his head in utter disbelief of what he's just heard, his mouth half open, jaw slack in some approximation of dumb shock. "You didn't say nothing about wanting me to stay." It's an accusation, like Luke would even think about lying about it. Hell, it's only Jesse's utter insistence on honesty at all times that has him admitting anything at all. If he was allowed to lie, he'd say something else entirely.

"I didn't figure I needed to," he growls out.

"Didn't figure you needed to." Bo seems to stagger under the weight of that thought. Or at least step back, his puffed chest sagging as he exhales. Backstepping until he gets to the couch, where he kind of folds himself downward in the soupy light of a cloudy day that's given up on ever brightening and is on its way to full dusk. "Luke," he says, trying to hang on the argument, but the energy's gone out of it. "You needed to."

Well. There's not a lot he can say to that, so he doesn't even try. He stands where he is, watching the shadows overtake the room. Should probably turn on a light, but then again, if he did he'd be able to see Bo's face and he's not real sure he wants to do that right now.

"Everything in life ain't like one of your great schemes, Luke Duke," Bo informs him from across the room. He's warming to being angry again, but not quite managing it yet. "You can't just set up circumstances, put everything into motion and expect everyone will do what you want them to. This," Bo's hand gesturing between the two of them in a motion big enough to be seen even without looking directly at him. "Ain't like trying to keep Boss Hogg from robbing his own bank. And hell, half your plans to stop Boss didn't work neither. Not the first time. And not without all of us being in on the plan to help it along when it went wrong."

"Yeah, well, I don't much reckon you wanted me to get Jesse and Daisy involved." Although, admittedly, Daisy's help was needed in the end. "And you couldn't be in on it, neither."

"Why not?"

"Because it wouldn't have worked that way." His right hand comes out of the fold across his chest and cuts through the air horizontally, trying to put an end to a conversation that can't possibly lead anywhere good. How did they even get here, anyway? Bo had a bad day at work and the next thing he knew, they were in the middle of an argument about old resentments that would be better let go. "You – I wanted you to have choices. Options of what to do with your life and if you knew what I wanted, you wouldn't be making them choices for you, you'd be making them for me."

"Bullshit, Luke. Bullshit." Voice raised again, leaning forward in his seat like maybe he's going to get up and stand in Luke's face again. Making him look up because of those extra inches Bo grew and Luke gets tired of craning his neck just to have an eye-to-eye discussion. "You didn't want me to have choices and all that other crap. You wanted me to make your decision for you. It's that same yellow stripe you've always had running down your spine. You won't never say what you want—"

The light tower in the parking lot outside Bo's window pops on just as Bo's reaching the crescendo of his diatribe, throwing yellow, angular rays into the room that aren't nearly as pretty or kind as a sunrise.

"And then you go off and act like it's all perfectly okay with you, you'll just get married to some _girl_ ," and the way he says it, you'd think Bo had never gotten with a girl in his life. Still—"And have a family and everything will be fine."—It's supposed to sound angry and demanding, supposed to be a fight, but the parking lot light stretches rudely across Bo's face, revealing a jagged streak like lightning over his cheek.

"I'm sorry, Bo." Because he knows a tear when he sees one and maybe he's never been any good at figuring out what to do when Bo cries. But anything that hurts Bo this bad, well, he's genuinely sorry for having done it.

"It don't matter." Yes it does, it matters a whole heck of a lot. Bo really thought he was being sent away, and that's the thing that got between them and festered until it was so toxic that neither of them wanted to touch it. "Not right now," Bo amends. Good to know, he's reserving the right to fight again about it later. Maybe he'll give Luke a little warning next time and it won't get so ugly so fast. "What's important now is figuring out what we do next. Doug Reed wants your decision tomorrow."

Luke nods, looking out the window at the offending source of artificial light because as ugly and unwanted as it is, it's not half as hard to look at as that tear that Bo hasn't bothered to wipe away. "You thought about what you want?" It's not so much a sigh as a huff that Bo lets out. Telling Luke that he hasn't learned a damn thing, but this isn't the same as it was three-and-a-half years ago. "Whatever you want, I'm coming with you," he reminds them both.

"What I want," Bo says, then stops. Probably picking at is nails; he's got a bad habit of doing that when he's upset. Aunt Lavinia used to swat him for it, unless the whole bunch of them were in their pew in the church, listening to a sermon. Then she'd take both of Bo's hands in one of her bony ones and squeeze. To an outsider it would look like affection, but Luke knew. His aunt had a lifetime of shucking corn, kneading bread and working side-by-side with the menfolk in the fields. Those hands were powerful and a single squeeze could make Bo's face go tomato-red and sweat break out on his brow with the effort not to cry out in pain. Eventually the kid learned not to pick his nails, at least not in front of Lavinia. After she passed, he started right back up again. "Is for you to tell me what you want," he finally finishes.

Luke's eyes track away from the window to look at Bo. Black spots in front of his vision from looking at the light too long, but it's still there, that stupid tear that tells him what a lousy cousin he's been, what a lousy – lover? Whatever it is that they are to each other. "I ain't the one with the great future in NASCAR, Bo. I ain't got nothing to lose either way." It's his last chance to reason with his cousin and it works about as well as all his previous attempts.

"I didn't ask you what you had to lose. I asked you what you want to do."

What he wants to do. Hell, he can't keep that much straight in his head for two days in a row. It's not like being almost eighteen again and deciding to join the service; back then about the only thing he knew of consequences had been taught to him by Jesse's whip. And it's not like being chased by revenuers or crooked lawmen which have the simple benefit of being life or death situations that require more action than thought. Besides, when it comes to that sort of thing, he always knows he's got Bo on his side and between the two of them he knows they can overcome just about anything life-threatening. But this isn't anywhere as petty as all that. This is Bo's future and Luke never has done a lick of good when he's tried to manage that.

"Damn it, Luke, you ain't got to be a saint," oh, he still doesn't like it when Bo uses that word against him. Doesn't like it one bit, and Bo knows it, too. "Or smart or nothing else. Ain't no one here to see what you do but me, and I already know you ain't perfect. Just a coward."

It's a goad. Luke knows it's a goad and he knows how to handle goads with dignity and maturity.

"Bo!" To stay calm in the face of a goad and never give in to the temptation to answer to a goad. "Shut up, would you? I ain't no coward." There, that was a truly brilliant response.

"Come on, Luke." Bo's getting to his feet now, that yellow-orange illumination shining on him from behind and giving his a long shadow to throw around the apartment. "You can say it. You ain't got to be chicken." Looming over him now, tipping his head to the side and though his cheek is still wet, he's getting ready to start making those infernal _bawking_ noises, maybe flapping his arms and otherwise making a fool of himself. "Unless you really are scared to admit what you want."

"I ain't scared of nothing." Then again, who's the fool? A whole lifetime of living with Bo and he never has figured out how to fold his arms across his chest hard enough to protect his heart from him. His cousin has always managed to get under his skin and make himself perfectly at home there, itching and irritating until he gets what he wants. "And I want you to leave me alone."

"Come on, Luke, come on," Bo's egging, like maybe he's ready for a fight. Asking Luke to punch him in the jaw so he can hit him back. "Come on, shake off that yellow stripe and say what you want." Weaving from side to side like he really is challenging Luke to a fight. "Come on."

"I want to go home." He'd like to say it's a planned response, that some logical part of him figures that Bo wouldn't let up until he gave in and said something. But he can't because despite the fact that he has managed to keep his arms folded solidly across his chest, his words come out like a plaintive little kid who's been backed into a corner.

"Okay," Bo says, his fighter's dance settling down into steadiness.

"Okay?" Okay? What's okay? Okay Bo's going to go walk away from his future because Luke's been provoked into saying something that he's not sure he'll feel the same about tomorrow, something that was as much an outburst as an answer. (But he does, he realizes, want to go back to Hazzard. Right now, in this moment that Bo pushed him to, home is where he wants to be.) "What, you're gonna quit the circuit because I said I want to go home?"

One long hand comes up to grip around the back of his neck. His instinct is to pull back, but Bo's fingers are NASCAR strong and his determination is more powerful now than it ever was before the two of them went their separate ways. He gets pulled forward and Bo leans down so their foreheads are pressed together.

"No one said nothing about me quitting the circuit, Luke. But it's okay that you want to go home. I'm glad you told me what you want."

* * *

Funny thing about fights. They seem so important during the beginning and the middle. Every word said or fist thrown is a chance to win or lose, but eventually they have to end. Exhaustion or reason triumphs and they're done like a thunderstorm melting away into gentle rain.

"So you ain't quitting the circuit?"

Luke doesn't seem to know that this fight's run out of steam, that it's done and gone and good riddance. Bo presses forward to kiss him, but Luke tries to back off. He settles for a cheek instead of lips.

"I ain't said that, neither."

Snort from Luke, telling him that he has to make up his mind one way or the other. He already knows that, which is why he kisses Luke's other cheek.

"We ain't got to deal with Doug Reed until the morning." Plenty of time, really, to do a hundred different things (though Bo's got his heart pretty well set on doing just one of the possibilities, and preferably sooner rather than later) and still make up his mind.

Luke tries to pull his head back again, but Bo holds on. Bright blue eyes, too close to see much but in the reflected light from outside the window, they're staring at him. Probably wondering if he's cracked his head on something, or maybe had a few drinks on the way home. Thinking useless thoughts while studying him, and that's why he kisses under Luke's eye. It closes reflexively, and Bo kisses the lid.

Gets another snort for that, then one last one when he tells Luke that everything's going to be all right. Of course it is; Luke told him that much already and if he wasn't such a fool he would have remembered it all along.

Finally, Luke tips his head and kisses him properly.

"Come on," Bo suggests, ruffling up the back of Luke's hair and jutting his jaw in the general direction of the bedroom.

"Don't you want dinner?" It would make sense after all. His stomach's not growling yet, but it will be soon enough.

"With you cooking? Nah. It can wait." He kisses Luke again. "I love you," he mumbles.

"You're an idiot," Luke offers as a response. It's the kind of thing that ought to make him angry, except it's said so quietly and intimately. Still, Bo can't let him get away with it.

"But?" he asks.

"But I love you, too," Luke confesses, then presses his lips softly against Bo's one more time.


	32. Chapter 32

Funny thing about a fight, whether it ends in split lips, bruised egos or an aching conscience, at first there's just relief that it's over. That faces aren't absorbing hit after hit and feet aren't scrambling to find solid ground. That there is no more need to rise within the count of ten to prove you're ready to go another round, just to take more of a beating. That there is no longer a need to prove something, if only that you're stupid enough to have found your way into the fight and strong enough to have outlasted it.

Once the excitement's over and the cheering has faded (or the law has arrived to haul someone off to jail) there are the bruises and welts. Swollen, bleeding souvenirs of an adventure that would have been better off skipped, aching memories better forgotten.

Bo doesn't seem to be scarred or sore. Not worried or upset anymore and somehow, the pointless argument that ended in a pointless declaration on Luke's part seems to have had no effect on him at all. Other than making him ravenous for sex, then ravenous for food (pizza that had to be ordered in again, because neither of them wanted to cook or go out) and then silently asking for a nightcap on the sex. After which he spent a few minutes running his fingers through Luke's chest hair as though it was fun to play with, sweaty as it was, and finally fell asleep. Luke slept too, at least for a while, but that ended what could be five minutes or an hour ago, when he awoke to phantom aches and pains where he and Bo didn't hit each other. Mulling over what happened and whether it means anything at all, while Bo sleeps curled up against his side, hand over his heart. Luke rests his own hand over Bo's, fingers curling around into his palm. Maybe just to reassure himself that they both survived, that even if nothing was resolved, they didn't do each other any real harm.

"Hmmm," Bo mumbles in his sleep.

"Shh," Luke tries because he's pretty sure it's not even technically early yet, more like still late. No chores to be done and no reason both of them have to be awake. But Bo's hand squeezing his goes to prove that they are.

"You ain't sleeping," Bo accuses, his voice low and rough. He swallows, clears his throat and they might as well admit it. "So why should I?" No one's going to be sleeping for a while now.

"Because you got to face Doug Reed tomorrow."

Bo shrugs, or does as good an imitation as a man lying on his side possibly can. "So do you."

_Only_ , Luke decides against pointing our right now, _if you tell me what you want me to say to him_. Because in all the aftermath or afterglow or whatever that was after the fight, Bo never did get around to saying what he wants to do.

"Luke," Bo kind of grunts as he rolls just enough to stretch. Then he's back where he was, more or less. Main difference is that his head lays heavily on Luke's shoulder now. "Did you love Hannah?" It's one of those probing little questions that's only safe after they've worn each other out arguing over nothing at all. Something Bo has wanted to know for months, maybe, but hasn't figured out how to ask.

He blames the extra weight of Bo on his chest for the deep breath he takes. "I liked her," he admits. "Mostly. Sometimes I wondered how I'd ever managed to get to dating her in the first place. We didn't exactly have a lot in common." Bo's playing quietly with the hairs on his chest again, just letting him talk until he runs out of words. "But mostly I liked the idea of her. Jesse liked her, and I reckon I figured if he did then my father would have. I figured she was the best I could do."

"I don't like her," Bo admits.

"I don't figure you've got any reason to. But ain't none of this her fault. As far as she knew, I was available at the time she met me." And he might have liked the way she thought he was a better man than he has ever been. "She didn't never mean no harm to you."

"You wanted kids with her." The fingers tickling against his chest are starting to get annoying. The conversation isn't a whole lot of fun either. "Right?"

"Quit that," he says, grabbing Bo's hand with the one that isn't trapped under the sweaty weight of a barrel chest. Bo thinks he means the ticking and stills his fingers, but Luke's more interested in putting a stop to all the questions. His cousin's got a right to know the answers, but then again, there's no point in talking about what didn't happen. Bo never has known when to let something go.

Bo folds the length of his hand into Luke's, threading his skinny fingers through. Pushes just to feel the resistance, and waits. Because whatever their earlier argument was about and however it sprung up out of nothing at all, Luke's supposed to have learned something from it. Like a repeat of the lesson Jesse taught them long ago about confession and telling the truth. That it's somehow better to say things than it is to keep them to yourself, but he can't see how talking about the kids he and Hannah never had is going to help anything at all. Bo pushes against his hand again. _Just answer the question, Luke._

"Jesse wanted us to have kids. So did Hannah. Heck, the whole county was waiting for us to have kids. They had a pool on whether they'd get my eyes or hers. I reckon even Cooter had some money in that one. All them guys is probably really ticked that I broke up with her." Another shove on his hand from Bo. _You still didn't answer my question._ He tries to take a deep breath, but Bo's heavy head keeps his lungs from inflating as much as he would like them to. "Ain't having kids what you're supposed to want?"

"Maybe," Bo admits. "But not everyone does what they're supposed to." No, doing the right thing is reserved for _saints_.

Luke tries again to get a deep breath, and Bo lets go of his hand to push himself into another position. Still resting on Luke, just with more of his weight borne by his own shoulder. But he's not going anywhere, not giving up this line of questioning.

"I guess I figured that if we had kids, it would be a family, and that would help. There'd be kids to fill up the gaps between us. I'd love the kids and she'd love the kids and that would be kind of like loving each other." And in the end, maybe it's not so awful to tell the truth. Even if he has not, until now, really thought out what the whole truth is. "She loved me, but I didn't love her back."

Bo's hand comes looking for his again, but he's dropped it off to the side, out of reach. He has to lift it up and meet Bo halfway.

"You know with me, you ain't going to have no family, right? Other than what we already got, that is." Skinny fingers slip between his again, offering up another truth-demanding little shove.

"Don't need no kids if I've got you," he explains. It's dark, but he can see the dull glow of the broken digital clock in the wetness of Bo's eyes and he can feel the heat and sweat building between them. "You ain't never going to grow up."

It's the kind of statement that most men would take as an insult; Bo giggles at it. Which goes to prove it true. He tucks his chin and lifts his head a bit to get a better look at Bo. Too dark to see the actual smile. Which is a shame; the boy is so pretty when he grins.

"It all works out in the end, anyway," Bo informs him. "You been an old man since you was twelve." More giggles, a stupid shoving match setting up between their hands until Luke wins by rolling Bo over and settling on top to pin him. Nice, wide bed that they can wrestle in and still have plenty of room left over.

"I can still take you," Luke points out. "Even if I'm so old."

Bo shrugs like it's part of the conversation (but it's not, it's him testing just how tightly he's being held and how much wiggle room it's going to take to get free) and defends his ego. "You've got an unfair advantage. You was trained how to fight in the military. And how to box."

"Are we boxing?" he asks. "And all that was years ago. You get your weight training now." And those power shake things he drinks instead of meals, half the time. They look sweet but the face Bo makes after the first sip seems to indicate otherwise.

"You know, you got a point there," Bo chirps back at him and starts pushing up against him. The boy has gotten some benefit from that training he does, or from the hours of driving. He can put up a good fight of it, but in the end, Luke's got more density than Bo's got strength. He rolls back to where he was a lets a heavily-breathing Bo pin him.

"Them hands of yours are pretty strong," Luke has to admit when they close tightly around his forearms to hold him down. "I reckon that Butch ain't all bad."

Bo squeezes his arms one last time, then falls to the bed next to him. "He's a good guy. You'd like him if you got to know him."

"I ain't gonna like nobody that pushes you past your reasonable limits," Luke asserts.

"Except yourself, right?" Bo asks, then rolls over to kiss him, quick, before he can answer that. "You're cute when you're overprotective," he gets informed. Funny, he's got it on pretty good authority that no one else finds him cute when he hauls off and hits someone that has threatened his family. But Bo never has been known to have good taste about anything. Hell, he could have his choice of any girl he wanted – Miss America isn't out of the range of Bo's possibilities, but it's Luke's face that he's chosen to spend the rest of his life looking at. "But Butch ain't never done nothing to me that I can't handle."

Things settle between them, get quiet. There's a distant voice of someone calling to someone else outside in the parking lot and sometime later, the thud of a door slamming. Luke's had enough time to go back to nursing aches and pains over a fight that never was anything more than just words and figures he's been left on his own to stew for the rest of the night when Bo rolls over again to settle his head on Luke's shoulder, where it was when this conversation started.

"I reckon I need to figure out how to say goodbye to him," he mumbles

"Who?" Luke asks, halfway wondering if Bo has taken to talking in his sleep again, like he used to when he was little.

"Butch, Chief, Itchy. All of them."

"You planning on quitting?"

"Reckon I'll have to. Don't figure they're all going to follow me down to Hazzard."

"Bo," he starts with plans to remind him of everything he'll be giving up and how there's no real reason he has to. They can both settle right here in Mooresville and Bo can drive for one more season or ten, whatever suits him. But Luke never gets another word out. Bo's brazen lips are find his, those skinny, sneaky fingers wrap around him to stroke and anything like words get lost in a rough and tumble race to see who can make the other groan louder, beg more, finish first.

Besides, Luke reckons in the brief moment before he gives up all thought altogether, they can always discuss it again when they catch their breath. (Or just do this again, instead.)

* * *

Tiring Luke out is a fool's errand, but that's okay, because Bo's a fool, willing to do a fool's work. In a way it's like being kids again, tumbling around and rubbing, kissing, nothing more sophisticated than hands and grunts and then Luke holding him after like he always does.

But then, as much as they've grown from those first fumbling efforts, sometimes he figures their best days together were when he was fifteen and it was almost enough just to be near Luke, when the slightest touch sent an electrical thrill through him. When decisions were based on nothing more than what they wanted at the moment and consequences were in the future and could be worried about when they happened. Before Luke went off to the military and came back so serious.

"Luke," he says, because they're not teens anymore, and his cousin may be tired, but he's got no plans of sleeping. The tautness of his shoulder under Bo's ear tells that tale. "I want to go home."

Because if Bo's a fool on an errand, Luke's an idiot on a lifelong guilt trip. Or just has a magnified vision of himself and his impact on the world. Sure, when they were kids there wasn't much of anywhere that Bo went that Luke didn't lead him, but they've grown up now. The last three-plus years ought to go to prove that.

Then again, him leaving home in the first place was engineered by Luke. Who didn't want him to go, who somehow expected him to know that, who wanted, when it came right down to it, to be defied.

"You've wanted to be a NASCAR driver since you was old enough to say the words, Bo."

"And I've been one. For three seasons, plus almost half of that first one." His fingers stray up from where they've been fanned across Luke's chest, finding a chin and jawline. Muscles there as miserably clenched as the ones in his shoulders and Bo could take that personally. Sex is supposed to mellow a man out; that is, if it's any good. But this is Luke. He can probably go at it all night, just about kill his partner, and still be tense in the morning. "That's enough."

"You stay," and he may not be enjoying the conversation exactly, but the rumbling of the words conducted from Luke's chest to his ear is sweetly soothing. He'll have to remember to talk Luke into singing to him like this someday. (He'll have to get him powerfully drunk, first.) "And you could win the Winston cup. If not this year, maybe next or the one after. You're about this close to it, Bo." It's too dark to see the distance between the fingers Luke holds up, but he doesn't care if they're an inch apart or more like six.

"I want to go home." His lips follow after where his fingers have been, kissing a cheek that's so hard it might as well be bone.

"Why?"

He wishes he could say that he wanted to go home before he pushed Luke into admitting his own desires. It would even be mostly true, but mostly true isn't wholly true.

"You got any idea," he says instead, kissing that same spot again. Rough stubble where Luke hasn't shaved since morning and his beard always has grown in quickly. "How tiresome it is driving in circles and playing by the rules? It's like running moonshine without a single revenuer on your tail. Boring." Wholly true is something else, something Luke wouldn't like if he heard it, so Bo resolves not to say it.

Luke's hand flops onto his head. Maybe it's meant to run through Bo's hair or pat him gently and just misses its mark in the dark. As it is, it's caught somewhere between affectionate and ridiculous. "You'll miss it if you give it up. You know you ain't gonna be eligible for the dirt track circuit no more, or any amateur race."

"Don't need them races. All I need is Rosco and Enos and maybe Sheriff Little from time to time. Hopping ditches and hiding in bushes is much more fun than going around in circles with a bunch of drivers that all got the same goal as you." The whole truth is that Bo can be happy anywhere, so long as he's got Luke. "No one trying to do nothing but get to the end first. Not like back home where cars can come at you from anywhere and do anything they darn well please." The whole truth is that Luke's a lot trickier, his happiness is tied up in so many different things. And one of them is being back in Hazzard, where he can look after Jesse and Daisy, where he can do the lion's share of working the land. "And it ain't no fun that there ain't no lakes on a NASCAR track to dunk the other drivers into." But mostly Luke needs to feel like he's taking care of Bo. "I want to go home, Luke. You can't talk me out of it."

"All right," Luke says, but he probably doesn't mean it. This conversation may need to repeat itself in ten different ways before his cousin will genuinely accept what he's saying. "Now go to sleep."

Bo sneaks in one last kiss, feels Luke's fingers stroke through his hair a lot more sweetly this time, and does as he's told. Because it'll make Luke happy – at least for now – if he does.

* * *

He wants to hold Bo's hand. It's ridiculous, impossible, but the urge is there to just reach across the space between them, grab onto Bo's hand and hold on.

"Are you sure that you've really thought this through?" Doug Reed has taken Luke's resignation – or non-acceptance of a job is more like it – reasonably well. Oh, there was some grumbling about how they'd designed the job just for him and were disappointed he hadn't seen fit to accept it, but as soon as Luke mentioned that he was looking forward to getting back to Hazzard, any complaints stopped. Reed seemed content to know that he hadn't taken an offer from another team. Stayed seated behind his desk in an office big enough to make Boss Hogg green with jealousy, and didn't fret a whole lot about it.

Maybe. Maybe he just didn't get a chance to build up to a head of steam before Bo added his part. About how he was looking forward to going back to Hazzard, too, which meant he wasn't going to renew his driving contract. Which sent Reed into a tailspin, his lined, permanently tanned face tightening down into seriousness, his feet setting firmly on the ground as he stood to be at the Dukes' eye level. One paternal tack after another has been taken ever since.

"Because there are mistakes you can't unmake, consequences that you're going to have to live with. Some decisions are bigger than others."

Bo's lip is getting nibbled raw. He's holding his ground, but he never has liked being scolded. Which is half of what Reed's doing to him.

"And you have so much talent." That's the other half, the praise. "Most of it natural." Mixed with the guilt. "But we've invested a lot of time and effort into making you NASCAR material. You can see where I'm not too eager to let you go."

"Well, yes, sir," Bo's saying, shifting on his feet like he always has when he's sorry to disappoint someone. "But I fulfilled all them contracts I already signed. So I reckon we're even."

Doug Reed pulls a face that's sad enough to make old Flash look downright cheerful by comparison. "Legally, sure." He takes the two steps that put him directly in front of Bo. Within easy swinging reach of Luke's left hook, but despite what Bo has sad about him being overprotective, there are some battles he can't fight for his younger cousin. "But think about your team. Meade and Itzkowitz and Jackson – they've all spend three good years learning your moves, figuring out how best to support you and take care of you while you're out there on the track. Do you really want to tell them that they've wasted all that time?"

"No, sir." Bo absolutely does not. The boy has never cared for giving anyone bad news. "But I reckon it ain't been wasted. We've won some races. And they can run crew for whoever you find to replace me. Or Don."

"Replace you?" There Doug Reed goes, getting paternally disappointed in Bo's thoughtlessness. Thing is, Bo is just gullible enough to buy into the whole act. Poor little rich man, standing in front of him, explaining how it is inconsiderate of Bo to leave him now. "I'm not sure you realize what you're talking about. First of all, we'd have to scout someone." Which is Dave Mays' primary job, and Bo ought to know that as well as Luke does. There have got to be a few kids out there driving on dirt tracks that this team has got their eyes on. "And then make them an offer, and only after they accept could we start training them. We'll lose a whole season before we can even get someone new on the track." Then again, Bo's been on his own for three years. Alone, without anything like family to look out for him. Without his lifelong support system around him and maybe what he got from Doug Reed and Chief Meade seemed like a reasonable replacement for what was missing. Maybe this man's guilt and lectures felt like love. "And Don's not going to be ready this year. Might not ever be."

"Then maybe you ought to let him know that," Luke puts in, even if he hasn't been invited to participate in this part of the discussion. "Seems like a man that's dedicated years to training and practice ought to know that he's not going to make the cut, so he can get on with his life and do something else."

It's a strange world when he figures that defending Bo outright would be a mistake, but sticking up for a guy he hardly knows might just be the best he can do. At least, he hopes it'll help Bo see that Doug Reed's parenting style isn't necessarily geared towards what's best for his 'sons.'

"I'm sorry," Bo says quietly, and it's hard to tell whether he's apologizing for himself or for Luke, who is getting glowered at. Seems like Doug Reed didn't precisely want Luke's advice on the matter. Luke tries to care about that, but can't bring himself to. "But my mind's made up. I ain't interested in renewing my contract."

Reed lets off staring at Luke to fix a gentler look on Bo. "Well, that is a shame." And Luke can feel yet another attempt to sway Bo's opinion coming as thick and clammy as a heat wave in July.

But eventually the team owner has another meeting to attend and he lets them go. His assistant, Cheryl, eyes them curiously as Bo walks out with his figurative tail between his legs, looking just about as sad as Bo Duke ever does.

* * *

Bo's not sure what he expected from the guys, but after Doug Reed, he might have figured anything would be easier.

"You're a damned idiot." Bo casts a wary glance over at where Luke's standing off by himself, a good ten paces away, arms folded across his chest. Dark eyebrows low and that's about all the detail he has time to pick up in the shadows of the garage, before he goes back to looking at Lem's heavy, pink face gawking back at him. "You would leave now? Hazzard," that nickname he's never liked hearing come from Lem's mouth. It's always sounded like mockery, but never more than it does right now. "What did you think this whole year is supposed to be about, anyway? Shoot, this is where I teach you everything I know about driving."

Which ought to take all of a minute, maybe less. Not that Lem's a bad driver; he's actually pretty good. But Bo's better and pretty much the only thing he learned from Lem is that some guys like to put up a big and blustery front in an effort to keep any prying questions at bay. But it doesn't work; everyone knows Lem's act and why he puts it on.

"I'll miss you, too," Bo offers. Luke's scowl gets meaner. Poor guy has had to keep his protective instincts mostly under wraps while Bo's been navigating his way through personalities that Luke's never gotten a chance to learn. Dealing with Doug Reed isn't the same as handling Uncle Jesse, and Lem's nothing like Cooter. These guys play a lot rougher, but in the end that's all it is. One big game, and that's why he has to leave NASCAR. It's been fun, but it's never felt like anything more important than a fairytale. Back in Hazzard, with Luke and Jesse and Daisy and the land of his ancestors, everything is real.

"You're still a damned idiot," Lem informs him.

"Leave him be," Chief interrupts from the platform over at the side where he sits whenever Bo or Don are running practice laps. Bo pretty much led Luke straight to the garage after leaving Doug Reed's office, and hollered that he wanted everyone's attention, then announced his resignation before anyone could move away from whatever they were working on. He figures that he and his cousin are just about to be _persona non grata_ on these here grounds when Doug gets out of his meeting with Cal Sharnhorst from the Dixie King grocery store chain about a sponsorship – a meeting Bo knew would be happening because it's his car that was supposed to be painted with the logo – and gets around to telling security to kick them out. "Bo's a family man. You can't fault him for wanting to go home."

"Thanks," Bo says, trotting over to the platform to reach up and give his former pit crew chief a hug that's just about as awkward as a two-legged goat in a footrace.

"Of course, I haven't got the first idea how we're going to crew for Don out there," he mumbles in complaint.

"Very slowly," Itchy puts in. He had been underneath one of the backup cars when Bo and Luke first arrived, just a dirty pair of legs hanging out from under the rear bumper, but now he's on his feet, standing with a ropy arm slung over Lem's shoulders. Comforting the other driver or himself, or just plain being goofy Itchy, out for a good time no matter what the circumstances. "I reckon our jobs just got easier, anyway. The way Don drives, we ain't gonna have to worry about too many pit stops. He ain't never made it more than about thirty laps." Which is an exaggeration, but not much of one.

"You're still an idiot," Lem reminds him, but he steps out from under Itchy's tattooed arm to come over and offer Bo a hug. "I was looking forward to kicking your tail a whole bunch more this season."

"As if you could," Bo tells him. "Listen, fellas," he says, pushing back from Lem's grip. Before Bo can finish his thought, Itchy's there to take Lem's place. Luke's still holding his ground close to the entryway, but he doesn't look quite as upset now. "I reckon me and Luke had best go now." Chief waves over at Luke like he's only just now realized that he's over there. And this is another reason that the two of them need to go home. Here, even with the fancy title that got made up for him and the position on the crew that may or may not even have been necessary, Luke would always be in his shadow. The lesser Duke boy, where back home they're equally respected by their neighbors and reviled by the law. "But before we leave town, I want you all to bring Don and Bubs and Butch out to the Mooresville Tavern for one more night out."

"When?" Chief asks him.

"Tomorrow," he decides. The rest of today, he figures, is going to be full of doing whatever it takes to settle Luke down after a morning of having to stand back and watch while Bo faced the rough side of his former boss's tongue.


	33. Chapter 33

"Bo," he complains, but Bo's ears are not so much deaf as covered in hair. Luke's pretty sure his words get through, but they're distorted by the time they get past all that blonde fluff, because his cousin almost never seems to do what he's told. "You ain't even supposed to be out here."

No, Bo's supposed to be in his own bedroom sorting through the disaster of his life over the past three years. (And four months, but who's counting? Certainly not Luke.) Instead, he's out here in the living space, making a mess out of the few things that Luke has managed to sort into two piles: keep and chuck. He figures that their tasks are pretty straightforward and though they are the same, they are supposed to be taking place in two distinct and separate parts of the apartment. Bo, on the other hand, figures it's his beholden duty to make a shambles out of the entire plan.

Which isn't fair, it's a good plan, backed by the solid reasoning of Luke not wanting to work in the bedroom and run the risk of coming across something that will tell the tale of the many girls that Bo must have had in there over the course of three years. Add to that the fact of it keeping them separate so they can make some real progress instead of finding clever ways to distract each other. It's one of his better plans, but Bo seems intent on thwarting it. Even if he has gone along with – heck, poured his heart and soul into – far worse ones.

"I want to keep this," Bo defies, like a little kid with his tongue hanging out. "You got it in the wrong pile." Which is just ridiculous. One more NASCAR magazine, full of glossy pictures like the rest but this one's years old by now. Nothing in it is relevant today.

"Fine." It's not fine, it's stupid, but if they're ever going to get this done and start packing in earnest, they're never going to get home. "Put it on the other pile."

They called Jesse yesterday, after dealing with Doug Reed and Bo's former teammates. Luke did the dialing and the talking at first, telling the oldster they'd made their decision and would be home as soon as they could figure out what to do with Bo's apartment and all of his stuff. _That's good, Luke, real good_ , his uncle had said back to him like he was proud of the decision. But it's hard to know whether he means it, how he expects his nephews to behave when they get home. And whether he figures it'll be easier to try to talk what he figures is sense into them if they're under his roof.

After Luke had conveyed the basics, he handed the phone over to a pale and lip-biting Bo. The conversation started out quiet and halting, but it hadn't been long before Bo was telling some loud and excited tale about last year's race in Talladega, which went to prove how he always had been a better driver than Lem anyway. Somewhere in the middle of a detailed description of the debris on the track and the drivers it stymied, Luke decided it was about time one of them started packing up, and since Bo was on the phone, it pretty much fell to him. A pile started accumulating in the middle of the living room of clearly broken or unusable objects, things that would be of no use on a farm, and anything that probably should have been discarded years ago. The pile of things to keep started later and never grew very large.

Luke could hear the way Bo's voice changed as the person on the other end of the phone went from being their uncle to their girl cousin, and he could feel Bo watching him, even if he didn't look up to meet those staring eyes. Probably questioning what in hell he thought he was doing, but it was a cinch that it would take both of them to get Bo moved out of here, so he just kept working.

Now that it's been almost twenty solid hours since the phone call and Bo has given his assignment, there's no reason he needs to be in the living room/kitchen/dining room at all. Luke's taken the much larger space and left Bo to the small one, which ought to make things move alone relatively evenly, taking into account Luke speed and Bo's laziness. If only his cousin would get to work at all.

"You should read this," Bo says of the magazine that he's pulled out of the junk pile. Luke waves a hand in the air to tell him to just drop it with the things he wants to keep, and goes back to sorting. He pulls a drawer out of the set of cabinets in the kitchen, but what's in here is not exactly forks and spoons. Luke throws a rusty – something, pair of pliers, maybe? – onto the pile that's going into the dumpster and goes back to fishing through the drawer. Becomes aware of the utter lack of noise or movement other than his own scrapings through the jumble of items (all of which he dumps loudly unto the dumpster pile) anywhere in the apartment. Looks up to see Bo, one hand on his hip and the other holding out the magazine, as though Luke's going to sit down right now and read a magazine from three years back.

"You should get to work," he retorts. Bo flaps the magazine in the air a bit to make his point that it should be read and Luke starts thinking about the couch. How if they lugged the ugly striped thing down to the dumpster now, Bo couldn't be expecting him to sit down on it and look at some stupid magazine.

"Here," Bo says, taking the one hand that had been perched on his hip and using it to flip through the pages, then folding them back. He offers the magazine to Luke, with its tattered and slightly yellowed pages. Luke's own hands itch to plant themselves on his hips and refuse to look at what Bo's holding out to him, though he knows it's childish. Give Bo an inch and he'll take a lazy old mile, but then again—

Before he even reaches for it, he can see the magazine's once-glossy pages are open to a photo of a smiling, young Bo Duke. The photo can't be more than a few years old – it's professional, and unless mug shots count, no one with any specialized skill has ever taken a photo of any of the Duke clan as long as they lived in Hazzard – but it could be ten years old for all the changes that have happened in Bo. Maybe Luke never noticed before, maybe he's somehow forgotten what Bo used to look like, but now it's right there in front of him. How his cheeks have fewer curves and more lines, his jaw seems longer, his smile not as genuine. He's become a hammy actor in a play full of lines that about nothing important, with scenery that's as poorly constructed as it is unfamiliar. And the worst part is, he's had to put on the exact same show every day for the last few years, whether the audience was receptive or obnoxious, whether he was in the mood to perform or not. And Luke, wielding his stupid rules, kept him from even getting a much needed vacation every now and then, a chance to come home and just be Bo Duke, Hazzard boy and former moonshine runner. Luke's already been a jerk for three years, there's no point in adding one more minute to the tally. He puts the empty drawer on the floor in front of himself and takes the magazine.

Stands where he's been, between his two piles, and looks at the young man his cousin was when he first came to the circuit. What he's looking at isn't a proper article, doesn't even take up a full page. It's just a box in the bottom left corner, outlined in bright yellow. The photo might just as easily have been taken the day of the Carnival of Thrills jump – the coverall is just as flashy, Bo's hair is that same summer blonde he used to get working in the fields. He's the featured rookie of the month, apparently, though he'd been around for a few by then; the magazine is dated February 1981. There are a series of bolded questions asked by the writer of the article, some guy named Chris Curtis, followed by answers from Bo in regular print. Mostly it's a list of useless facts like his height (which is exaggerated to six foot six, when they both know that Bo is six-four on a good day), his age, his favorite foods, his hometown. When he gets asked about his family, he answers in a few sentences about his parents' death when he was a baby, and how he was raised by his uncle. Luke figures that section alone probably got him letters from a few thousand female fans, all of whom imagined themselves rescuing the poor orphan boy.

Finally, the next to last question asks about Bo's earliest driving experiences.

 _My cousin Luke took me out when I was maybe thirteen_ , is the answer printed in the magazine. _We lived on a farm with all these trails that we'd drive over just to get from one field to the next. Luke was really patient with me as I learned the clutch on our old pickup that didn't have synchronized gears. All that double clutching, the truck lurching, and Luke just kept telling me I could do it, that I was doing fine. He's always been that way, he's had confidence in me when no one else did. Without Luke, I probably wouldn't be be a NASCAR driver today._

The final question asks about Bo's goal for his rookie season, and the answer below it says, _to make my family, especially Luke, proud of me._

Somewhere in the middle of all that, he must've taken a few steps to the couch and sat himself down because here he is, looking across at Bo as he is now, extra lines, tentative smile and all.

"Bo," he mumbles, offering out a hand. His cousin comes closer and takes it, but ignores the way Luke tugs on it to get him to sit.

"When I was first here," Bo explains, "all I could talk about was you. At first it was okay because everyone was getting to know me, and I talked about Jesse and Daisy and Hazzard, too." Luke tugs on the hand in his again, trying to get Bo closer, but he just keeps standing where he is, making Luke's hand angle up awkwardly to hold onto his. "The guys, well Chief, really, had to set me straight after a while and I stopped starting every sentence with 'me and Luke.' But this interview was back after the first time they let me race, so I'd been here maybe two, three months." A shrug like it's all just that simple. "I was still talking about you then."

"Bo," he says, and looking up at him is just plain uncomfortable when the couch sits low and Bo stands as tall as he ever has. "I always been proud of you." Even when he was so mad at him he could punch him in the face, so upset that he could make stupid rules that kept Bo away from Hazzard for years. "Whether you was driving in Daytona or Talladega or down Old Mill Road back home, I was proud of you."

"Well, I know that Luke." Bo offers up a smile that announces that everything's fine, just fine, and what is Luke fretting about? They're together now and nothing else matters. But that's just Bo being the same fool he ever has been, living in the present and pretending that the past and future don't exist when they do and parts of them are so ugly that it hurts just to look at them.

Luke tugs at Bo's hand, but the intent is different now. It's just a natural consequence of the way Luke's getting to his feet, hard to do that and not pull on a hand that you're determined not to let go of. Then he does let go, but only enough so that he can wrap both of his arms around Bo's shoulders and pull him close. One of Bo's hands finds a tentative hold on Luke's waist, the other patting uncertainly at his back. The same as Bo ever is when he doesn't understand what has gotten into Luke, when he's not sure how to take affection offered so freely. Damn it all—

"I was always proud of you," he says again.

"I know." But he doesn't, he can't, not when he's never heard the words before today.

Luke just holds him tighter, hoping it'll be enough.

* * *

Beer has never tasted quite this good, at least not in Mooresville. It's a strange thing, because most of his life he drank what he could get, which was either fine moonshine or sudsy, watery beer. The moonshine was always top-notch, but he never knew beer could be savored. It was something to put past the tongue as quickly as possible so it could get to the belly and finally, after a lot had been put away, it'd numb the brain. After that, the drinking always got easier. It was only when he left home that he learned about subtleties and nuances of beer, the variety of flavors depending on brand and type, and he settled on St. Pauli Girl as his favorite.

Mostly, anyway. It was the best he could get in Mooresville, and far tastier than what he'd been raised on. Still, he would always think, in some quiet part of his mind where the chatter of his tablemates, whether they were friends or pretty girls, couldn't reach him, that Boar's Nest beer was his favorite. And if he let that quiet part of his brain keep thinking, he'd get homesick, which was no good. So he'd drink more and more until that little voice in the back of his brain would shut up, or at least start slurring badly enough that Bo could no longer make out the words. And then he'd take one of the pretty girls home with him to shut his body up, too.

But today the St. Pauli Girl beer is genuinely delicious, genuinely wanted. Maybe because he figures it'll be a bunch of years before he ever has it again, maybe because the guys around him. Maybe because of the lousy way Doug Reed took his resignation, but maybe mostly because of Luke and his endless stewing on whatever it is that he feels he's got to stew on. Still stewing here at the table, even if he's talking camshafts and timing chains with Itchy.

"Well, let's say you wanted to modify some after-market sprockets," Itchy's saying and Luke's nodding along nicely because really, they might want to do that for the General someday. They can't afford the quality of parts that line the walls of any given NASCAR garage, and even if they could, it's not like Cooter could just buy them on the open market. What Luke's gotten a gander at in the Reed garage has very limited distribution. But it sure would be nice to get their hands on some of that stuff for the General, someday.

Meanwhile, Bo's enjoying Lem maybe more than he ever has in the three years he's known the man. Funny how, when he knows that Bo is leaving, the otherwise bristly man becomes supportive and almost brotherly. "Just remember to keep up all your contacts. Call Cale or Petey or Kyle every couple of months. Ask after their races, their kids, whatever, anything at all to keep in touch. That way, if you ever want to come back, you've got a lot of friends in high places."

But Bo's only able to listen to this welcome advice with one ear, because Luke's up on his feet again. The man hasn't sat still for more than a minute or two in the day and a half since they met with Doug Reed.

"Luke?" he asks, even though he knows it's rude to interrupt not just one conversation, but two. Though neither Itchy nor Lem seem particularly worried about it – they just start talking across the table to the rest of the assembled team.

"I was thinking maybe I'd go home," Luke tells him. "And do some more packing." Which is silly when Bo doesn't have that much that he plans to take with him, and they have no set date by which they've decided to go. But a lifetime with Luke and he knows that sometimes the best thing you can let him so is climb up on the roof and replace shingles that aren't even loose, or send him to chop wood that won't be burned for six months.

"Take the General," he says, though he half wants Luke to stay. His cousin would do it if he asked. But it's enough just to know that if he really needed or just wanted him, Luke would be there. He doesn't have to test it. "One of the guys will bring me home."

"Sure," Itchy assures Luke. "I got to go that way anyway."

Luke gives the skinny fueler a funny look, trying to assess the ratio of time to sobriety when Itchy's already put away a considerable amount of beer during a short conversation.

"I'll bring him home," Chief announces, like he can see the protectiveness in Luke's eyes. And maybe he can, maybe it's as obvious to the outside world as it is to Bo. "He'll be in good hands."

"Much obliged," Luke answers sincerely, offering Chief his hand to shake. He says his goodbyes to the rest of the group, reaches out for the General's keys, squeezes Bo's shoulder in a way that makes him want to forget all about this gathering in his honor and follow after Luke, then walks away and out the door.

"Don't wait up," Itchy offers as a parting salvo, but Luke's already outside.

"Now that Dad's gone," Dave Mays puts in from across the table where he and Bubs have been mostly keeping to themselves up until now, "this party can get started."

"Hey," Bo hollers and even in the moment he knows he's overreacting. Maybe because it's Dave, who never did take the time back when he gave Bo his test drive to learn what Luke could do behind the wheel. Who never did care about Luke beyond allowing him to facilitate the whole thing in the first place, as if his cousin was nothing more than his agent. "Luke could drink any one of you under the table, if he was of a mind to." But he's not, he's stewing over things that even Bo doesn't know or understand, so how can Dave or any of the other guys? "He's a lot of fun."

"Too bad we'll never know how much," Itchy offers and Bo recognizes it as an olive branch. "Since you're leaving us and taking him with you."

And Bo finds himself glad that Luke's not still sitting there when the first round of kamikazes gets ordered. It's even better that Luke's not with them when Butch shows up and takes the seat next to Bo, and the drinking starts in earnest.

* * *

Bo's clothes, that's the tricky part. So many tee shirts from this mechanic's garage and that tire shop, not to mention the car dealerships with decidedly sexy vehicles ironed on right across where Bo's ribcage would narrow down towards his waist. Pretty cars, some of them with pretty cartoon blondes spread across the hoods, showing oversized curves through undersized bikinis. The kind of thing uncle Jesse would have quite a few words to say about, and wisdom would indicate they should all get a proper burial in the parking lot dumpster, but then again, he has no idea which, if any, of them have some sort of sentimental value to Bo.

Sentimental value – and that's why he was supposed to stay out of the bedroom and leave Bo to pick over his own personal effects. Because he doesn't want to know which items hold sentimental value and what, exactly, the sentiment is. How many of the things in this room that have come to Bo since he left Hazzard were given to him by girls, and why would he want to keep them? How many have there been and was there ever anyone special?

And then his stomach plummets in shame to remember that picnic last summer where he introduced Hannah to Bo. How his cousin did his best to smile and flirt and just plain be himself, but it was there. The heartbreak in his eyes, at the corners of his mouth that couldn't quite climb to the heights of his usual smile. And now Luke's got the gall to feel jealous over a tee shirt that may or may not have anything to do with any girl at all, when he shoved his fiancée in Bo's face just six months back.

He folds the shirt in his hands into a tidy square like he learned in the Marines, puts it on the pile with the others he's gone through. He's not sure where this pile is going, but at least it'll be tidy and easily moved when the time for making decisions comes.

He can't swear that he knows what he's doing here, other than an utter inability sit still while Bo said goodbye to the friends he's made here. There was something in watching them, the way they reacted to his jokes and his chatter, how they looked out for him, teased him, _knew_ him.

All his life, Bo has belonged to Luke. Jesse used to say he had to be careful about Bo, because his cousin looked up to him, would follow anywhere he led without thought or concern for consequences. Luke had to do the thinking for them both. He hasn't always been as smart as he could when it comes to Bo, but he's never had to doubt that it's him that knows Bo best, that can take care of him better than anyone else.

And now there's a whole NASCAR team that's been doing it for three years, and Luke can't swear that they haven't been better for Bo than he ever was.

It's been dark for far too long and Luke's just about out of clothing to sort through when the loud banging sets in on the front door. Doesn't wait for Luke to make his way from the bedroom into the larger space before an impatient second knock comes.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," he mutters. Wonders if it's karma knocking, whether it's some shapely young lady come to call on Bo. He can halfway imagine opening the door to a carefully made-up face, bright red lips explaining how she's been Bo's girlfriend for the past two years, only she's been taking care of an ailing aunt out west for the past few months. She's back now, and—

That's as far as his imagination has time to take him before he twists the lock and opens the door to find a surprisingly sober-looking Itchy with a clumsy, giggling Bo leaning across his shoulders heavily.

"Luke," Bo says, letting the u drag out for too long, and barely making it to the k. "See, Itch? Itch-itch," Bo is suddenly fascinated by the sound of the name, such as it is. "Itchy-itch? I told you Luke'd be perfectly glad to see you."

"Chief drove," Itchy offers up quickly. "I just got elected to haul him up the stairs."

"Luke," Bo starts in again, practically singing his name to him.

"Bo." Talking over a drunk isn't easy, but he figures it's for the best of he tries to inject some logic into the proceedings. "Let's get you to bed."

"Ain't the stars nice tonight?" Well, who knows, really? They might be, if only he could see them around all the artificial light that glows from the nearby parking lot and so many others around town, not to mention the motorplex that's got the racing lights on tonight. "We should camp out."

Oh, sure, that'll be fun. Sleeping on concrete and dealing with the drunk right out in the open. Odds are they'll get arrested for public intoxication, and he's pretty willing to bet that the cops here are more competent than Rosco. Besides, Bo's too drunk to run even if they did manage to break out of the Mooresville jail.

"When we get back home," Luke assures him. "Now get in here." He steps out the door to slide an arm around Bo's waist with the intent of guiding him inside.

"Home?" Bo leans heavily against him but at least he takes a step toward getting inside instead of standing out on the concrete walkway and waking all the neighbors so they can get in on this fascinating conversation.

"Come on," Luke encourages.

"I'll help you," Itchy offers from Bo's other shoulder, which is still draped over his skinny ones. "He ain't no lightweight."

"I got him," Luke tries, but—

"Your eyes are so blue," Bo observes, loud enough that the whole building knows the color of Luke's eyes. Bo turns his face close to Luke's, like he's expecting to get kissed right here and now. Luke takes advantage of his cousin's lack of focus to drag him into the apartment. "So blue," Bo reminds him.

"Observant, ain't he?" Itchy offers as he, too, steps over the threshold then kicks the door shut behind him. Luke's torn between being grateful for the help and sorry that his cousin's friend has made it into the apartment where there aren't as many shadows to hide Bo's efforts to get far closer to him than any cousin should.

"Yeah, listen, thanks for bringing him ho—" His words get interrupted when Bo leans over to kiss him. Luke plants a hand on his collarbone to hold him back, which changes the careful balance of weight amongst the three of them, and Bo trips over his own feet. Not that it deters him from his self-appointed mission to get his lips on Luke's.

"Affectionate, too," goes to prove that Itchy's seen more than Luke would like for him to. More than Bo will be happy about, whenever he gets around to sobering up, enough to have Jesse tightening the reins around their necks if he ever finds out.

Luke makes a point of shaking his head and making faces, like Bo's kiss was utterly unwelcome. (It was, just not for the reasons Itchy's assuming.) Peppermint, it's not hard to look disgusted about that. "He been drinking Schnapps?" Luke asks incredulously. Sweet flavored drinks are what get bought to woo girls. Dukes, raised on whiskey, don't drink them for any reason.

"Naw," Itchy informs him. "He just had a candy. Found it in Chief's car. Lord alone knows how long it's been there."

"It was good," Bo offers.

"Listen," Luke says, because by now they've managed to finagle his cousin up to the bedroom door, and Luke figures that his friend doesn't need to follow them in there. "I got him. Why don't you," leave, but that's not a nice thing to say to a man that must've dragged his heavy cousin up three flights of stairs. Heck, it's not a nice thing to say to anybody, even if he really wishes Itchy would go of his own accord. "Sit down on the couch there and I'll take care of him."

"All right," Itchy says, when he really ought to be saying _no, thanks, I've got to get home myself_. Bo has mentioned that Itchy is one of the other guys from the Reed team that lives in this complex, but he's never said which building. Wherever it might be, the guy is clearly in no hurry to get there.

Bo proves himself capable of standing on his own two feet the minute they're safely in the bedroom with the door closed behind them. Not that it stops him from leaning on Luke just long enough to get a real kiss, but once that's done, he's reasonably well balanced on his own feet, looking around the piles of folded things that Luke has left here and there.

"You been busy, blue-eyes." Oh, he's still plenty drunk, but Bo's got more physical coordination than he has let on up to now. Maybe Itchy didn't have to do a whole lot of carrying after all.

"Get ready for bed," Luke directs, stopping just short of an order.

Bo waggles his eyebrows at him like he's just made a lewd suggestion.

"Get ready to go to sleep, Bo." His voice is rising; that's bad. He's not really angry with Bo, just annoyed at trying to have a rational conversation with a man who left his rationality at the bottom of a beer mug. Or a shot of Jack Daniels, more likely. Not as good as Jesse's moonshine, but it'll do in a pinch and it's about the only thing strong enough to get Bo quite this drunk.

"You ain't coming with me?" Bo pouts.

Luke sighs, Bo flops down on the bed with an utter lack of care or dexterity. "It ain't," he says, kneeling down to grab hold of Bo's left boot. "A whole lot of fun to sleep next to a drunk." He pulls and Bo, who is not really up to the task of thinking, slides with the pull rather than yanking his foot out.

Maybe Luke was a little too aggressive with the boot. Bo's a giggling heap on the floor.

"I didn't say nothing about sleeping." Waggling eyebrows as Bo sits up properly and reaches out a long arm to hook it around Luke's neck. Face too close, kissing peppermint again. And under that, something stronger, medicinal. Not Jack Daniels, something a lot less precise and careful. Cheap whiskey that even Boss Hogg would be embarrassed to sell.

"It ain't a lot of fun to kiss a bottle of disinfectant, neither," he points out. "And you ain't up to no more than that. Hush, Bo," he adds when that big old mouth opens itself to start protesting some more. "Itchy's right outside." He tugs on the boot again; this time Bo seems to remember how to pull his foot out.

Bo nods, looking down at his knees or maybe the buckle of his belt. Trying to figure out exactly how to get undressed, but then again—

"I'm sorry, Luke."

He pulls off the other boot before standing up and offering a hand down. "Come on, Bo," he says to get his cousin to take it. "There ain't nothing to be sorry for." Heck, it's his cousin's last night out with friends that helped him through some hard times. Luke reckons he was just about this drunk on his last night as base camp before he boarded the helicopter to Saigon, then back stateside. He wasn't all that much younger then than Bo is now, for that matter.

More sighing as Bo messes with his belt buckle, but his hands are as drunk as the rest of him and he's easily outsmarted by the mechanics of the situation. Luke unhooks it for him, stands in front of him until Bo gets it open and unthreaded from his jeans, and finally has nothing to do but look up at him. Luke tips his head and offers a kiss, gets an unenthusiastic response. The high is wearing off; Bo's headed toward hangover without ever getting fully sober. Best thing he can do now is go to sleep. Luke points him toward his pajama pants, hanging over the footboard of the bed where Luke left them when he started picking through Bo's other clothes.

"You reckon you can get yourself ready for bed?" he asks. Bo nods like a broken little boy trying to make good after a whipping. "I got to go say goodnight to Itchy," he explains. And, somehow, make it seem like Bo's just an oddly affectionate drunk – like it's all at once perfectly natural and perfectly gross that Bo has kissed him.

"You coming back?" Bo pouts back at him. As if Luke would leave him over so little. Maybe Bo figures he's been abandoned over less. Maybe he's even right about that.

"Of course," he answers. "You just get into bed."

Bo mumbles something or other as Luke leaves the room again. Might just be _yes, sir._

Itchy's sitting uncomfortably on the edge of the couch, elbows on his knees and tattoos flexing as he shifts to get to his feet.

"Hey," he says, looking every bit like a gangly teenager who is facing his friend's father after having brought him home in bad condition. Part of it's his skinny body, but mostly it's his guilty face. "I didn't know he could get that drunk, honest. He usually holds his liquor better than that."

Yeah, well. Whatever it was that he drank is probably closer to turpentine than genuine drinking alcohol.

"Ain't your fault he drank that much." Itchy is, oddly enough, scared of him. As though he'd get out a shotgun and start firing off rock salt at him. He guesses Bo never explained to Itchy the particulars of probation. Heck, he might not have bothered to say anything about it at all, given that he got released from it before he ever met the man. "What happens now?" He gets a confused sound for an answer, so he explains. "You was on Bo's pit crew, what happens to all of you guys now that he's leaving?"

Itchy laughs, looks at the ugly blue carpet for a moment, then looks up again at Luke. They're about the same height but Itchy's rail thin in a way that proves he's not a farmer. There's no way to go through life lifting bales of hay and not collect some muscles in the arms and shoulders. It's no wonder he's a feuler, not a driver. He's built for short bursts of speed, not endurance. "They'll split us up, probably. Some of us will go to Don, some to Lem, maybe some new guy that they'll pick up in the next few weeks. Only took them a month to find Bo after they decided Don wasn't ready to hit the big track yet. He might never be," Itchy muses. "But don't worry about us none. Reed'll keep us all busy. Won't be as much fun as crewing for your cousin, but it'll be work. That's more than most NASCAR dreamers ever get," he adds with a shrug of narrow shoulders.

"Well, I'm sorry just the same. For us not staying and all."

"To tell the truth, I wasn't sure how it was going to work, you being in charge of us instead of Chief." Itchy says with a nervous little shrug, his hands crammed into the front pockets of his loose and faded jeans. "Not that I got any problem with you or nothing," he hastens to add. "But you're kind of protective of your cousin. And we're used to Chief who's—well, he's even tempered." Luke raises an eyebrow over the suggestion that his own temper is anything but even. (Even if he knows it can run a little hot at times.) "His goal is to win. I wasn't sure whether yours would be."

"We would have won plenty," Luke assures him.

"I reckon," Itchy offers, noncommittally. "Don't matter none now. Whether they put me with Don or even with Lem, there ain't going to be a lot of winning in my future. Or fun on Wednesday nights. Your cousin was the best for that."

Luke's not about to offer any more apologies. Not when he figures Bo's about to spend a long night and most of tomorrow paying for just how much fun he's been.

"But, well, it's nice that he has family and all," Itchy goes on. Luke's arms have folded themselves across his chest at some point and he figures that's for the best. If they were out on the loose he might consider hitting the guy in front of him. Itchy looks like the type that bruises pretty badly; probably a bleeder, too. He might just call the cops and looking as beaten up as he's likely to after absorbing one of Luke's punches, well, there'd be jail time. Probably prison; Boss Hogg would squeal to high heaven about probation. Yep, it's plain old wisdom that has Luke keeping his hands tucked up into his armpits. "I guess I'd better go," Itchy finishes up lamely, and truer words were never spoken. He edges toward the door. If Luke were a better man, he'd walk him there, open it up for him. Thank him from bringing Bo home in one piece.

"Bye now," is all he says as he watches that skinny body slip outside and close the door behind him.

* * *

"I told you," Luke mumbles into the thick darkness in response to the way he whines. "To go before you went to sleep. You just put your big old drunk hand in my face and told me to mind my own business."

"What time is it?" Bo asks him. Then, "Shh," he shushes himself.

He may not be all the way sober. In fact, the spin of his head denies any sobriety whatsoever, though he figures he must have some. A little. He knows he's awake and he knows he doesn't want to be, which might make him more sober than not. Then again, his stomach points out that if he were truly sober he'd be trying to find something to soothe it instead of trying to ignore it. His tongue wonders exactly when he took to eating hay like the livestock, and his head's confused about the anvil that must've fallen on it in the night.

But his bladder overrules all of it, the drunk, the sober, the misery in his head, the questionable eating habits, the tumbling of his stomach, the need to know the time. And Luke may or may not have suggested that he go to the bathroom some time back when the lights were still on and Bo was still mostly happy if not entirely awake. Still, it's not nice to sound so smug about it now.

"Come on," Luke says, hauling him up by the arm.

He asks Luke to bring the bathroom to him instead, on the theory that he's dying and it's his final wish. Funny how the words seem so clear in his head, but they come out of his mouth like so much Rosco-nonsense.

He's on his feet apparently, though he can't swear how he got that way. Leaning on Luke, whose shoulders are rock hard under the weight of his arm draped across them. He remembers how badly he wanted to kiss Luke earlier, how he wanted to curl up with him and rest his head on his chest to hear that safe and steady heartbeat. Now he's being manhandled (but then again, his legs seem to have stopped taking orders from his brain, which is perfectly understandable since it was his brain that kept telling the rest of his body what a great idea it was to empty every tumbler put before him last night) across his own apartment by his cousin and he's wondering why he wanted to be so close to him.

"I don't feel so good," he informs all of them – his cousin, his stomach, his brain, his mouth, his legs. None of them take him seriously.

"Keep it down, Bo," Luke warns him.

Down, yeah, that stuff should stay down. It didn't taste too good on the way there and he's pretty sure he doesn't want it coming up again.

They make it to the bathroom and while he's figuring out his pajama pants and getting them low enough, Luke's turning on the shower. It's a trick as old as indoor plumbing, throw the drunk into the shower until he gets past the worst of it.

"Don't need that," he mumbles as he coordinates relieving himself.

"We'll see," Luke answers back, sticking a hand under the spray of water to make sure it's a comfortable temperature. It strikes Bo as such a sweet gesture that he starts to get emotional, even as he concentrating on making sure he hits the toilet and doesn't make a mess that Luke will stay up for hours, scrubbing.

Bo manages to finish emptying his bladder before his stomach turns mean on him, bearing down on itself until there's nothing for him to do but kneel and let it take its course. Luke's there to push his hair back from his face, even as water rattles uselessly down the drain in the shower. Somewhere beyond the spinning swirls of misery, there exists a corner of his brain that's more sober than not; it's this part of him that recognizes that this is the way Luke loves him. Not with grand gestures or meaningful words, but by the way he looks out for him, paves his way and makes everything easier. And just maybe, Bo thinks as he starts seriously considering just dropping his head onto his arms and spending the rest of the night on the bathroom floor, that's the best kind of love there is.

He has no idea how night turns to day or how he's come to be where he is, but there's a smear of light when he cracks his eyes open, and an uncomfortable seam under his hip. The couch, the bay window over his head leaking light like there's not a miserable man right underneath it, suffering, curled into a wretched ball, with a garbage pail on the floor in front of him. He's got a touch of the white lightning flu.

And Luke's in the kitchen, hands on his hips and staring at the coffee pot like it's as stubborn and stingy as Boss Hogg. Shoulders tight, head down, one hand coming up to scrub through his hair; he's got that dark look about him like he had in the days after Diane and the Carnival. Like he's been trying to hold everything together with bare hands while all the forces of nature are vying to rip it apart.

This isn't that serious, at least he doesn't think so. The piles of Bo's possessions here and there, some tidily folded or lined up, others in heaps (and how did he accumulate so much in just three years?) tell the tale of a man trying to make sense of cacophony. Trying to get them back to where they came from and it might just be an impossible task. Oh, they're going back to Hazzard and most of the stuff in this apartment is not going with them. But they're never going to be young and innocent, just discovering each other's bodies in the hidden corners of their growing fields. Jesse and Daisy, no matter how much all four of them might wish it was possible, are not going to forget what they've learned. Hannah's still going to be there, pining for Luke and soliciting Bo for his help in restoring a relationship that never was very good to begin with. Bo's still going to have three years of memories that don't include Luke.

All of this is manageable. Ought to be easy, really, but then again, this is Luke working himself up while Bo's severely compromised. Can't even bring himself to try to sit up for fear of the crushing ache it'll bring to his head. Not to mention the spin of his stomach.

"Luke," he croaks, seems like his throat isn't any too happy about what went down through it or came back up it last night. But his voice works, which is a pretty good sign. He reckons other parts of him will find ways to get back to working right in time, too. "Come here." He pulls his knees up closer to his chest, making as much room as he can for Luke to sit at the end of the couch. Must not leave enough space because though Luke's eyebrows raise in surprise at the invitation and he saunters over to where Bo lies, he doesn't sit. Instead he uses his toe to nudge the garbage pail away from where it has stood vigil, and sits on the arm of the couch next to Bo's head.

"You're alive then," his cousin remarks drily.

"'Course I am. You ain't lost a patient yet." He tests out smiling, finds he's capable of it. It's a shame that Luke's not looking at him to see it.

"Well, I ain't got no medicine for you," Luke informs him. "All the hair of the dog," by which he means a sip or two of Jesse's finest, which doesn't so much cure a man as put him in a slightly better mood about his misery, "is back at the farm." A hand comes down to touch Bo's temple, as if there's a fever to be felt there. A gesture that tries to be practical but betrays itself as affection when the fingers stroke awkwardly into Bo's hair, pushing it back from his face.

"That's okay, it ain't so bad," Bo lies. Figures it doesn't count because it might not be entirely true now, but it will be eventually. "Come here," he says again, pushing the heel of his hand into the mushy cushions underneath him in an attempt to sit up. Doesn't work as well as he'd like on the first try, but he's nothing if not a stubborn Duke. Tastes hot bile at the back of his throat, glaring at the garbage pail that's mocking him. _Right here, Bo, old buddy, in case you can't hold your liquor._ Well, he can, and he doesn't need a stupid garbage pail outsmarting him. (That thing is going straight into the dumpster the minute he's got enough control over his stomach and head and feet to walk down the three flights and drop it there. Nobody likes a smart-aleck garbage pail.) Finally upright and reasonably steady, he pats the cushion next to himself. Luke looks at him skeptically. "Come on," he urges.

Luke shakes his head and slides off the arm to sit approximately next to him. Not too close.

"You ain't gonna puke on me, are you?"

 _Thanks_ , he wants to say, _for your faith in me_. But then again, he can't swear that he hasn't recently puked on Luke and given him good reason for concern. "Nope," he says and figures that no matter what else he does or doesn't accomplish today, he needs to be sure to keep his word on that one. He slings an arm around Luke's neck to drag him closer.

"Bo," Luke warns. He's not too sure he wants to get all that close to an untrustworthy drunk. Bo reckons he can't blame him, so he lets his fingers graze along Luke's shoulders, bound tight with tense muscle. Tries to smooth the bumps, but succeeding would rely on Luke's willingness to be calmed, and there's no sign that he's got any.

"You trying to mark your path or something?" he asks. Luke leans away and tips his head down to get a better look at him. "All them piles around here like so many cairns. Like you figure you'll get lost and never find your way back. This apartment ain't that big." That earns him a headshake and a long-suffering twist to Luke's lips. Poor man is far too smart to have to tolerate the fools of this world.

"Somebody's got to do some work around here, Bo. And I ain't hardly scratched the surface yet. _You_ got to decide about most of it."

"I know," he says, but Luke goes right on as if he hadn't said a word.

"Then we got to rent a truck, because whether you want to keep any of this furniture or not, it ain't like we can just leave it in the dumpster. We got to rent a truck—"

"I know," he says again, gets ignored again. You'd think he'd learn his lesson.

"And take it home with us or sell it to that consignment store," sour look gets just that much more bitter at that thought, "in Clemmons, or take to wherever your local dump is. Then we've got to—"

"I know," he insists, pulling on Luke's shoulder, bringing him closer even if his cousin figures it's his beholden duty to resist anything like being still or relaxed or halfway comfortable. "And we'll do all that. But it ain't got to be today or tomorrow. The leasing office ain't going to give me no breaks for getting out early. I've paid the rent through February so we might as well take our time getting out of here."

Luke tips his head to look at him like he's speaking Greek. Maybe he is, Luke never has known the meaning of the words _take our time_ , at least not when there's work staring him in the face. When there's an open road in front of him and the General underneath with Bo behind the wheel, that's when Luke's apt to say something about _take your time, no rush_. _Spare the engine._

Bo kisses him. It's not easy considering the distance between them and the complaints his stomach makes about moving at all, but he's motivated. Luke's cute when he's confused. "Cheer up," he says. Gets a twisted smirk of a smile, but it's better than nothing.

"It's hard to be happy when what you're kissing tastes about like a bottle of J.D. Hogg's sorry excuse for moonshine," Luke informs him.

"Not as hard as being happy when what you're kissing tastes like a cranky old man." Luke offers him a raised eyebrow that announces a lack of any kissing at all in his future. "I'm sorry," Bo offers. "I didn't plan on getting that drunk." Sarcastic smirk on Luke's face, probably remembering all those times one or the other of them said those exact words to Jesse when they were younger. "I'm just gonna miss those guys."

The smirk is gone; Luke's eyes move away from him to stare out at nothing. "I know," he says, distantly. Thinking again, the way he always does and it's not fair for him to go doing that this morning when Bo doesn't stand half a chance of keeping up.

His arm snags more tightly against Luke's waist, pulling to try to get him closer. Luke huffs, deflating like a birthday balloon on the day after the party, then gives in and slides over until Bo can comfortably lay his head on that bumpy, unforgiving shoulder. It's not much of a pillow, but it smells of Luke and home, and if Bo listens real hard, he can hear Luke's heartbeat. (Or his own, or maybe it's just the last of the alcohol coursing by his ears before making its way out of his body.)

"Going home is a good thing," he assures his cousin.

"I know," Luke says, but he doesn't, not really. Bo settles in a little closer, trying to get more comfortable. Figures it's going to be his job to convince Luke that they've made the right decision. But that can come later. For now he's got all he can manage just sitting here and keeping Luke close to him.


	34. Chapter 34

Bo's ridiculous finger, stroking with all the affection in the world down the length of his nose. That's what they've come to after four days of doing bits and pieces of what they should have accomplished in one. It's enough to make him think back fondly on the days of violence as a preamble to sex between them. For a second and only that long, because there's Bo's trembling smile blooming like a tentative mountain laurel, not sure that the winter chill is truly at rest for another year. Still acting careful, like he's got to convince Luke that them being together and going home is a good thing.

And maybe he does, or maybe life does. To Bo, major decisions are easy – whatever he wants in a given moment is what he strives for and he figures everything else will take care of itself. There is no such thing as consequences, just situation following situation, all of which are dealt with as they arise without any thought given to the fact that they could have been avoided in the first place.

Bo's silly lips kissing the tip of his nose with a quiet smack and it's almost more than he can take, but there his cousin goes, looking at him again, that smile that's more worry than happiness across his face. Luke wraps a hand around the back of his neck and pulls him close to kiss him for real in the (probably vain) hope that he can distract Bo from all this impossibly sweet and gentle affection he keeps trying to offer.

Luke figures he knows more about making decisions than Bo does, or just has more practice. Or has faced more consequences – there's no way to join the Marines and not have any number of regrets along the way, even if the sum total of those years is nothing he's sorry about. And paving the path for Bo to join the NASCAR circuit certainly made its own form of a disastrous mess, even if they're together now and Bo says he's gotten professional driving out of his system. Luke knows that life isn't like one of those romance novels Daisy keeps stashed under the seat of her jeep so she can cram in a few quick pages during her breaks at work; it's not a simple matter of getting the star crossed lovers together and then life proceeds happily ever after. There are still a million decisions to be made, careful steps to take in any of a number of different directions, and at best they lead to living messily ever after. But missteps, those lead to miserably ever after and it's not like there's any kind of clear-worn path to follow. Each decision along the way is like playing roulette, and since they're Dukes, odds are the game is rigged against them.

Bo, pulling out of the kiss to tip his head like a puppy and watch him. On all fours, just about in Luke's lap as they share the couch – he'd just been sitting here, mulling over how to make dismantling Bo's place take another three days when it's already gone on for three too many, when Bo decided to come join him here. To crawl over to his half and start touching him with all the kind gentleness that you'd offer a newborn foal. Or a girl, and Luke doesn't like it. Bo's too close to focus on without crossing his eyes, so he closes them and the lids get kissed one after the other, and he doesn't like that, either. But when he opens them again, Bo's still looking at him like he's trying to read him. Like Luke's an unknown stretch of road that might suddenly snake left and leave an unsuspecting driver to careen off a cliff.

Luke pulls him forward by the neck again, reminding him by the movement of his tongue that there are better things to do than offer up little touches and pecks of lips that don't do much other than leave little tickles behind.

Bo's nobody's scholar, but when it comes to things he likes, he's a quick study all the same. Giving up on light affection and careful glances, he throws himself into the kiss, in all of his oversized, eager glory. Pressing in for more, that same set of fingers that was so insistent on being tender with parts of his face now stroking firmly down Luke's chest, pressing against cloth and buttons in a way that's trying very hard to be satisfying to either of them, and failing.

"Bo," he interrupts, comes out more like _Moe_ because the kiss, salty from this morning's excuse for breakfast in the form of a bag of potato chips, isn't ready to be over. Not by a long shot. Bo presses into him again.

They've gotten bold, here in this space that's an impersonal cinderblock clone of all its neighbors. Maybe testing limits, maybe just rebelling against what they're headed into. Home – Bo says going home is a good thing and most of the time Luke agrees with him, but again, nothing is as simple as his cousin makes it out to be – is going to full of rules about where and when they can be this close, touch each other, kiss. Where they can even be together shirtless, like Bo is right now, the lazy gray sweatpants he threw on this morning dipping low on his belly.

Then again, freedom is all very nice but not particularly practical. Unless, that is, Bo's thumb, which is doing lazy back-and-forth laps across his cheek, is hell bent on doing just that and no more. Bo's tongue says otherwise as it explores every part of Luke's mouth.

The official story, if anyone were to ask them (and no one has, not even Jesse when they called him a few nights back and told him they were still getting ready to home, but he shouldn't expect them for another week or so) is that they are staying here through Tuesday so Bo can enact some kind of a parting ritual with his cleaning lady, Mathilda. Strange behavior for a boy who can't be trusted to say a proper goodbye to Daisy half the time, and their cousin's been cleaning up after him since his spaghetti-flinging toddler days.

Luke reckons it's more about spending as much time as they can in this private little space they've carved out for themselves. About squeezing in as much sex as they can between now and the first morning of chores back home. Followed by planting and irrigation and they both know Jesse's going to work them hard when they get back. Halfway because he always does in spring, and halfway just to keep them too busy and tired to get up to what the oldster is likely thinking of as 'shenanigans' anywhere in Hazzard.

Then again, Bo's leaning back on his knees, awkward hand pushing Luke's hair back from his face. More affection and—

Luke knows that the two, sex and affection, are meant to go together like grits and gravy. It's one of those things, like cold winters and sweltering summers, that's just a fact. He just can't swear that he's ever really mixed the two before – any affection he felt for Hannah came at times when they were not engaged in sex, which should have clued the poor girl into something – and yet even without a lot of experience in the matter, he's pretty sure that Bo's got the proportion all wrong.

But, since his tongue is free to say it: "Bedroom," he suggests.

Bo's hand doesn't quite see the merit of that, turning around to run down his cheek, knuckles tracing over skin, scraping lightly against the scruff that Luke didn't see fit to shave off this morning.

"I love you," Bo whispers.

It's like topping marshmallows with whipped cream and chocolate sauce – syrupy sweet and Luke's never liked sugar half as much as Bo does anyway.

There again, the memory of Hannah pops up like guilt. How he tried to pay attention to her, learned her habits and tried to fulfill her wishes as a way to make up for the way he didn't love her. She'd ask if he was cold and he'd offer her his jacket, hoping it would be enough to satisfy her, to make her want to stay and be all the things he needed her to be. A coat in exchange for a family, and back then it seemed like far too little that he was giving.

Now he's got Bo, finally, all the way committed. No more games, no more threat that he'll leave and be happier elsewhere. And here Luke is, being a fool and letting all the nice gestures grate against his nerves, letting it bother him that Bo is willing to offer his gentle and sweet heart up in exchange for a few kisses.

"I love you, too," he says, even if it sounds funny to his own ears. Kind of gruff and stupid next to the sincerity of Bo's vow. "I'd love you more in the bedroom," makes it a joke to distract away from his own clumsiness. A snort from Bo; at least it's genuinely funny.

One last soft kiss, and Bo crawls out of his lap. Yanks at the waist of his sweatpants to get them up to a decent height, even if they're not going to stay that way for very long, and offers a hand down to Luke.

It almost ruins everything – a hand is what gets offered to those younger or prettier that you, and Bo's got no right doing it to Luke – but ( _quit thinking, Luke,_ Bo's advice on any given day, _it's dang overrated at times like this_ ) he makes a powerful effort to ignore the gesture completely. Gets up on his own, pulls the tee shirt he's wearing – one of Bo's and he imagines it can go straight from his body into the trash, since it's got the logo of some go-go bar on the front – off over his head and follows his cousin off to the bedroom.

Which is still in the same exact amount of disarray it's stayed in since that first day they pretended at packing up, give or take the fact that some of the clothes have been shifted from one pile to the next, and some have been picked through and worn. They might as well admit that the only thing that's going to make it out of this room and back home with them is the collection of trophies that used to sit on the width of Bo's windowsill. The rest of it's headed for the dumpster.

That's a topic for later, after they've tumbled into the bed, rolling over like it's a game from their youth, until they come to rest with Luke on top, where he can take charge. Kisses as rough and tumble as two boys raised on moonshine, hands nicked and scared by hard work stroking with firm strength along Bo's chest, shoulders, sides, back down to the loose waist of half worn-out sweatpants. Easy enough to push out of the way while Bo pulls at the button on Luke's faded blue jeans that are almost as thin as the shorts underneath. Doesn't take much for them to be naked and grinding together, grunting and sweating like the country boys that they are.

But when the hand softener gets found and spread, when Bo's legs are heavy on Luke's arms and every bit of his effort is going toward pressing in, a hand finds his, fingers tentative and careful. Bo asking for reassurance and affection. Forward momentum stumbles while he figures out how to lean forward well enough to kiss, then frees a hand to touch Bo's face. Quiet admonishment for Bo to keep his own legs set without any help from Luke, and he's able to both press in and show Bo the sweetness he craves.

And when they're both panting, sweating, trying to calm themselves afterward, and Bo wraps himself around Luke, stroking his back and mumbling quiet vows of love (and maybe just getting ready to turn things around and go at it again), Luke reckons that there are far worse things he could do than accept tenderness and give affection – as long as the one he's doing it with is Bo.

* * *

Luke's staring at him again; he must've angled left when he was supposed to go right, or maybe hoisted his end of the couch too high. Carrying is the sort of two-man task that Luke barely tolerates; makes it harder to show off his muscles when he's only bearing half the load. Given his druthers, his cousin would probably heft the couch over his head and carry it down three flights of stairs on his own. Except he'd get himself killed that way and Bo's only had Luke back in his life for a few months now; he's not ready to give him up. At least not permanently. He might be willing to part with Luke for an hour or two right about now, when he's a man on a mission to get all of Bo's furniture out of his house in some sort of a record time.

For years the gym wall in the Hazzard County Regional High School bore the name "Luke Duke" in bold blue letters, and underneath it the numbers 4:08:15, for his record time in the mile run at a track meet in 1973. Eventually it got painted over and replaced by another young man's name when Luke's record got broken. Bo wonders now, as he shifts the couch in his arms and prepares himself for a near-sprint down the concrete steps to the panel truck they rented for this little adventure, whether his cousin plans to paint his name on the walls of this apartment, followed by the speed with which he emptied it.

It is, he has to admit, time to leave this place. Sure, the rent he's already paid would earn them another week of privacy here, but all his goodbyes have been said, his welcomes worn out with everyone. With the possible exception of Mathilda, who actually shed a tear over his departure while a jealous Luke watched him hug her goodbye.

But the rest of them – Itchy, Chief, Doug Reed, Bubs – they've all had to move forward, accommodating Bo's absence from the team. Sure, they were sad and angry to see him go, but they've begun to close the gap that he left behind and their lives don't have room for him anymore.

"You all right?" Luke asks.

"Fine," he answers back in a tone that might not be altogether pleasant. He tips his head in the general direction of the open door so Luke will start moving them that way. This couch isn't exactly a nice piece of furniture but if its weight in his arms is any indication, it's sturdier than he ever realized. Either they need to haul it down the stairs or drop it where they stand, because he's got no plans to hang around here all day holding it. (They should have hired movers. He can afford it, but Luke was stubbornly insistent that there's no reason to waste money that way. Even if that's how most of the furniture got up here in the first place.)

Luke raises an eyebrow at him or his short temper, and starts to back toward the door. Not only is he adamant on showing off his furniture-carrying skills, he's been doing it backside first. Which is fine with Bo, it means Luke will always have the heavy end as they go down the stairs.

"I just don't think Jesse's right is all," he blurts, surprising himself. Not as much as he surprises Luke, though, who almost drops his end of the couch.

"Jesse?" Luke asks, his voice coming dangerously close to cracking like a teenager's. "About what?" Wide-eyed, head tilted to the side and not moving an inch. It's like Luke's never heard him question their guardian's judgment before. Then again, maybe he hasn't.

"Never mind, let's just move this thing."

Luke's still standing there, just this side of the threshold, staring dumbly at him. "Bo," he tries, but this isn't exactly the sort of conversation they should be having while the door is wide open to the neighbors. Granted, come tomorrow morning he won't live here anymore, but still, he'd rather his last night here be quiet and safe and not tainted with worries over who might get into their minds to harass the gay boys in apartment 306. He and Luke can handle themselves if they have to, but explaining bruised knuckles and a split lip to Jesse wouldn't be the ideal way to spend his first day back in Hazzard.

"If you're just gonna stand there, I reckon I'll go take a shower. By the time I'm done I figure you'll have moved everything out by yourself." He grins, or tries. His back hurts from all the bending and stooping he's been doing for hours, from the awkward angle at which he has to carry to accommodate his cousin's shorter stature, from all the twists and turns to the staircase with its awkwardly short landings. It might come off as more of a grimace to Luke. "And I'll be nice and clean." And relaxed, which would be nice, but there's no way it'll be allowed. "Or we could just carry the dang couch down the stairs now." Or drop it over the edge of the concrete staircase and let it pulverize itself on the asphalt of the parking lot. That would be satisfying, too.

"Fine," comes out from between tightly clenched teeth. But Luke starts moving in earnest, backing with the smooth speed of a man who is confident in the strength and skill of his body. Bo follows along like he has most of his life, about half as sure as Luke is that the two of them will manage to get the couch safely to the bottom of the stairs and into the truck without damaging it or themselves. As it is, he's scraped up his hands pretty good.

"That coffee table is next," Luke informs him through heavy breath when they finally reach the bottom of the stairs. About thirty feet of level carrying, then they lift Luke's side of the couch into the truck. "Bo," gets griped at him when he tries to shove the dang thing the rest of the way in with brute force. The feet shudder against the deck of the truck, setting up an awful racket that almost, but not quite, blocks out Luke's crabby voice. Bo considers giving it another shove and decides it's probably not worth it. Even if he manages to get it all the way in, Luke's not going to quit hollering at him. "You'll mess it up that way," his cousin informs him, then climbs into the back of the truck to lift the couch in properly.

"Only at the bottom," Bo offers as a compromise. "And that don't matter none."

"You really figure that Charles," a wrinkled nose is in the tone of his cousin's voice at the memory of the man they're going to sell Bo's furniture to. Up in Clemmons, because it's the only consignment shop either of them really knows about up here. Which may or may not be fair; the guy was a jerk, sure, but they went to him already upset over watching Daisy carefully deconstruct her life. And Luke got the better of him in the end, anyway. "Ain't going to look every piece over from one end to the other, just searching for reasons he can claim it ain't worth much?" He could try saying that he doesn't care about the money, but that'll only make his cousin cold and distant all over again. Something about Bo having enough money to not need to worry over every dime seems to put a wedge between them.

Besides, Luke's up on his feet inside the truck, lifting his end of the couch again, which means it's time for Bo to do the same out here, and help get the dang thing loaded properly.

"You ain't going to need my help for the coffee table, right?" he asks when Luke hops out of the truck, still as full of energy as he was a couple of hours ago when they started this project. Whereas Bo's just about willing to leave the rest of the furniture right where it is and let the management of this apartment complex charge him for removing it after he's gone.

Luke looks at him side eyed and shakes his head. No telling if it's exasperation or agreement that makes him do it, but Bo decides to interpret it as a time to rest.

"I'll just be down here then," he says, sitting on the tailgate of the truck. "If you need me."

His forearm is suddenly caught in a vice-tight grip, and even the sweat between the two of them is not going to get him free of it. His feet are under him and he's all but trotting after Luke like the short-legged little boy he once was.

"If I need you," Luke informs him, letting go of his arm because he's following along nicely, "it'll be upstairs with me. That bed's still up there, and ain't no way I can get that down without you at least steadying it."

"Unless we don't take it with us to Clemmons." The forced march up the stairs has begun. Bo's thighs burn with the reminder that he's already done this more times than he wants to. "It's comfortable. Maybe we should keep it."

Luke's head shakes against the notion, flinging the sweat that was caught in his hair in a wide arc around him. Bo stops a couple of steps below him to avoid the splatter. "How you figure on getting it to Hazzard, in the General's trunk?" Bo starts climbing again. So far this discussion's been safe enough for the public, but just like the last one he halfway started, he figures it's be best not to keep on having it out here in the open. "Besides, we don't need it."

"It's comfortable," he asserts again in between his own short breaths. "And big." Better than their twin beds back home by a long shot.

"Too big," Luke shoots back at him. "Unless you want to rent that there truck for another day and drive separately on the way down to Hazzard. Then you'd have to bring the truck back up here and how would you get home? You know once J.D. sees my face I ain't gonna be able to leave the county for years."

Yeah, he knows. His own probation waiver can't be rescinded, what with papers having been filed in Atlanta three years ago. Luke's was conditional, and Boss is still holding those forms hostage until Luke proves he's gone for good. Which isn't going to happen, now that they've made the brilliant decision to go home. Luke's been second guessing it all along, so Bo can't. Going home is a smart plan; after about thirty years or so, Jesse might be done being mad at them, and life in Hazzard will be good.

"I still don't think he's right though."

"What?" Luke stops on the steps ahead of him, turns around to give him a good hard look, and that's when he knows that his thoughts must have turned into mumblings. "Who ain't right? You talking about Jesse again?"

"Get on up there, Luke," he says, gesturing toward his open apartment door, which isn't more than a half a flight away now.

Funny, for a man who spent years in the military, Luke doesn't take too kindly to being given orders. He stands right where he is and folds his arms across his chest. Bo cocks a hip and rests it against the railing. At least, if he's about to get berated or otherwise harassed, he intends to take full advantage of the break in the forced labor.

"That bed sure would feel nice tonight," he says, when Luke stands there looking at him, his toe all but tapping as he waits for Bo to explain himself. Trying to pull rank, or at least take advantage of his seniority here on planet Earth, but it's not going to work. Luke isn't his uncle and there's no threat of a whipping. "Instead of sleeping on the floor, then driving home tomorrow." The General's the fastest car in three states, firm and solid enough to jump gullies, and rigid enough on highway bumps to give even a fully healthy man a backache. He and Luke are going to be mighty sore from lifting and carrying, and that's before they spend the night on that ugly blue carpet upstairs. "And I reckon it'd feel nice for a bunch of nights after that, too. It's a good bed, Luke."

His cousin waves a hand through the air. "There ain't enough room for it at the house, neither." Those eyes narrow down until they're just blue slits, glittering in the angular sun of a February morning. "Besides, don't you go thinking I didn't notice you trying to change the subject. What's Jesse wrong about?"

"About you being smarter than me. We gonna finish moving this stuff and cart it up to Clemmons, or are we gonna stand here all day?" It could be a moment out of five years ago, the two of them bickering like frustrated little boys. Meaningless arguments that grown men ought to be embarrassed to have, but then again, back in those days they would end in a shoving match that was just an excuse to kiss, to rub up against each other, to get their hands where they couldn't otherwise convince them to go.

"We're gonna finish," Luke concedes. "As soon as you tell me what Jesse's wrong about."

Bo shrugs. "The way I see it, there's plenty of room in the house for my bed. We just got to get them twin ones out of the way. At least one of them, anyway. Daisy's got a—"

"Bo," Luke cuts him off. His face is twisted, one eye squinting more than the other, lips pressed together; one of those looks that calls Bo stupid without a word being spoken. But he's not the one who's blocking any movement up the stairs and back into the apartment where they could close the door and have either of these conversations in private. As long as Luke's going to insist on having a discussion right here, Bo's going to opt for the one about the bed. It's more easily disguised as a perfectly normal moving-day argument then the other one is.

"Well, she does." A queen sized bed and a sewing chair that's overstuffed and wider than she is by about three sizes. "And she's got a bigger dresser than we do, too."

"You want a big bed," Luke counters, "we ain't got to rent a truck to get it home. I already got a queen bed."

No he doesn't, he's got a twin that's been next to Bo's from the time they were boys right up until—oh, no.

"I ain't going to spend my nights sleeping in _Hannah's_ bed," he declares. Because that's the only big bed Luke's got, and though Bo crawled into it with him at Christmastime, he's not going to do it again. That was desperation. "I'll sleep in the barn first."

Luke shakes his head at him like he's about the dumbest varmint that ever crawled out of a hole. "It ain't her bed. She ain't never slept in it. Not really."

"Not really?" barks out of him in a laugh. How does someone not really sleep on a bed? Well, there's only one way that Bo knows of and beneath that pang of jealousy he swallows down (because the woman was engaged to Luke, it's not news that they spent some time in a bed together, even if he's managed not to think too hard about that part until now) there's the incredulity. "How'd you ever get that one past Jesse?"

That, after all the conversation that his usually private cousin has tolerated taking place in public spaces, makes Luke's face wash over pink and his feet move. Up toward the door of Bo's apartment, where his finger is pointing, like he's the one who came up with the idea to go inside.

Bo follows him up the stairs, his legs still complaining about how many times he has already done this today and how little they want to do it right now.

"I didn't get nothing past Jesse," Luke mumbles once they've stomped up the last of the steps and into the apartment. Kicking their feet against the floor like a couple of farm-raised fools in the city, trying to rid their boot soles of mud when every surface they've walked on today has been paved and dry. Bo might have learned that he doesn't need to be quite as concerned about what he tracks into the house over the years that he's lived here, but following Luke through the door and closing it behind them has brought back old habits. "Her and me, we never—not on that bed anyway."

"Never mind," Bo says, because he doesn't really want to know what bed they did do it on. Or how many times, or what any of them were like.

He gets a sour face in response to that. _Too late, Bo, you started the conversation, now you've got to see it through._

"She passed out on the bed once, Christmas night. Too much 'shine," Luke explains, pushing a hand through his hair. Leave it to his cousin to be sweaty in February. Frizzy hair sticking out in all directions, and despite the harassed frown creasing his face, the overall look is cute. "I didn't sleep there with her. Jesse wasn't too happy about the unplanned company, but he was happy enough to find me in your bed instead of sleeping with her."

"My bed?" Now Luke's a frizzy-headed frowning mess, pink creeping across his cheeks again. Even cuter, though he'd deny he could ever be any such thing. Or maybe it's just that Bo finds his accidentally-confessing little soul to be adorable. Sure, circumstances demanded that Luke not sleep in the bed with his fiancée, but he could have slept on the couch. Or even, if he felt compelled to sleep in their childhood bedroom, for him to sleep on his own twin bed. But he didn't, he chose Bo's bed on a night when Hannah was in their house and that was—

Bo doesn't bother to finish the thought, just wraps his hand around the back of Luke's neck, sweat and grit, and kisses those pink lips, just as flushed as the rest of his cousin's face is. Feels Luke instinctively fight against affection he doesn't understand, his mouth opening to protest, but Bo's tongue engages his in a wrestling match that pretty much puts an end to the complaint Luke was planning to register. Any disagreement Luke might have been ready to express disappears as a little hum of contentment settles into the kiss.

"I love you," Bo says, pressing his forehead against Luke's and catching his breath because the kiss couldn't last forever, even if he might have wanted it to. There's still an array of furniture to be loaded into the truck.

"I love you, too," Luke rumbles back at him. "Now, what was Jesse wrong about?"

Bo steps back, wiping Luke's sweat as well as his own off his forehead. The damned question refuses to go away; if Bo were to refuse to answer it that long, he'd still be getting asked it when he's eighty, hairless and toothless (but Luke's older than him, so if there's any justice in the world, he'll be even more hairless and toothless) and Jesse is just a fading memory. Might as well answer here, now, with the door and four walls between him and any eavesdropping ears.

"Cooter," he admits. "I don't figure he would—Jesse said that if he knew what we was—what we are to each other, what we do—whatever—he said Cooter wouldn't treat us the same. And I don't think he's right about that."

"You don't figure he'd be shocked?"

"Well, yeah, of course, but I don't figure it would change nothing all that much." It's not like Cooter hasn't been a few colorful things along the line as he went through an extended adolescence that still hasn't entirely ended. "He's our friend, ain't he?"

"He has been," Luke agrees. "But this is pretty… different from anything we've ever told him before." Luke looks around the room like he thinks he might find a place to sit down. No chance of that, all that's really left in here is the coffee table and a couple of lamps. Not to mention the small pile of pots and pans that Luke pulled out of his kitchen cabinets, figuring he could sell them to the second-hand store, too. "He ain't gonna expect it and he might not much like it. Like Jesse, he'd still care about us and all, but he wouldn't be happy." A hand runs though that mess of dark curls again, and just maybe Luke's a bit tired from all the moving they've been doing today, too. Bo leads the way to the bedroom, where there's still a nice, big, comfortable bed to sit down on. Unmade, but not stripped down to the mattress yet and Bo reckons that means Luke's not in as much of a hurry to get rid of it as he says he is.

"At first, maybe," Bo says as he sits and toes off his left boot. Luke scowls at him for that, which means he only has one logical course of action. He kicks off the other one. "But like Jesse, he'd get over it eventually." Scowl turns to skepticism. Luke doesn't believe that Jesse's gotten over anything. And maybe he hasn't yet, not entirely. But he will have within a month or two. No more than a year, surely.

"I don't figure it's anything he wants to know. Just like we ain't much ever wanted to know who he's with. How do you think you would have reacted if he'd ever said he liked guys?" Luke stands in front of him, arms crossed over his chest. "I mean, before we ever—" but he can't quite finish the sentence because there's not really any _before_. The two of them have been together, more or less, since the time Bo hit puberty. Sure, they took a few years off from each other here and there, but it's pretty safe to say he's been Luke's and Luke's been his right from the very beginning. "You know," Luke finally finishes, his hand gesturing through the air in dismissal of the sentence he's abandoned.

Bo shrugs. He'd like to say that it wouldn't change the way he feels about Cooter, but he can't because he doesn't have the first idea. "I reckon it'd be about like any secret. Them that's really your friends stay that way, as long as you ain't done nothing to hurt them. And I can't figure that this hurts Cooter none." In fact, getting first dibs on any pretty little filly that happens into Hazzard ought to make him happy. Theoretically, anyway. "He knows all our other secrets."

"You want to tell him this one?" Luke asks neutrally.

"Yeah." At least he mostly does. He wants Cooter to know so he doesn't have to be careful what he says around one of his lifelong friends, but trying to imagine the actual telling leaves him with a slightly sick stomach. "I do."

Luke shrugs, looks toward the closed blinds over the window rather than at Bo. Like he can distance himself from this whole discussion. "Okay, if that's what you want."

Bo grabs him hard by the belt buckle, yanking him forward until he stumbles. His full weight crashing into Bo, flattening him onto the bed, hard elbow cracking into his ear as Luke tries to catch himself. Sprawled across the bed, Luke's weight crushing him into the bed just long enough for him to register the pain, then back up and off. Mostly; his cousin stays close, one leg between Bo's, thick arms pressing into the mattress on either side of Bo's ears to hold himself up. "Bo," he complains in that up-and-down tone that would make as much sense coming from a five-year-old.

Heavy fingers on his face, turning it from one side to the other as Luke sits back. "You okay?" he gets asked.

Not really, but he's got all his parts and if some of them hurt a little bit, none of them are broken.

"No," he says, but he's not talking about his physical health. "Ain't you learned nothing?" Luke's looking into his eyes now, as deep a stare as his cousin is capable of, but it's not affection or desire, and it's not because he's listening carefully to what Bo's saying. He grabs the skin on Luke's forearm, pinches it hard enough to leave a mark.

"Bo," gets hollered at him again. "What is wrong with you?"

"Not," he says deliberately, his other hand coming up to cup the back of his cousin's head, fingers getting tangled in sweaty dark curls, but holding fast to keep Luke looking at him. "Whatever I want. Not whatever you think is best for me. I tell you what I want, you tell me what you want, and then we decide. Together."

Luke lets out a frustrated huff that tries to announce how ridiculously his baby cousin is behaving right now. And maybe he is overreacting a bit, but hell, he's just spent three years being miserable, living away from home because it was what Luke thought he wanted. Or thought was best for him, and either way, he's not willing to let that happen ever again. Even if he has to harass Luke to give him opinions on the most minor of decisions. (Which this one isn't – telling Cooter or anyone else about them is a real risk, even if Bo's pretty sure it'll turn out all right in the end.)

"I don't feel all that strongly about it," Luke tries. Not good enough.

"But?" Bo prompts. "Come on, Luke, you got to have some kind of an opinion." After all, he's got an opinion of everything from the way Bo drives to the way Daisy dresses. And he's not normally shy about sharing those opinions, either.

"But," he growls back, so very put out that he's being forced to express himself. "I don't figure it's going to be all that much fun trying to keep the secret from him, either. Not when we spend so much time with him."

 _There_ , Bo wants to say. _Was that so hard?_

But he doesn't. He snags his free arm around Luke's waist and pulls him down. Slight resistance and then Luke gives and lays gently down against him. Accepts the peck of a kiss that Bo offers.

"Now," Bo says, waggling his eyebrows. "About this bed…"

* * *

"Luke," Bo complains at him, the morning air biting off his breath and shuttling it away in a puff of steam.

A curl at the corner of his lip is all the answer Luke offers.

The stars are fading into the bluish haze of pre-dawn; it's getting late. Back home they'd already be back inside after morning chores and feedings, sipping at coffee and debating whether this is the last frost of the season or if Mother Nature has a few more in her. Daisy would be rubbing at her puffy eyes, her hair back in a serviceable ponytail with fine wisps that escaped the elastic clinging sweatily to her face as she pushed hash browns around a crackling frying pan. The day's plan would be laid out by Jesse – plowing, tilling, repairing, baling – really, they'd be about halfway through their daily routine now, back at the farm.

But Bo's not used to getting up this early anymore, as his cranky little face can attest. He'd rather be back in bed.

Even if it wasn't nearly as comfortable as he wanted it to be. The bed – most of it, anyway – got sold to Charles in the consignment store up in Clemmons. A compromise between him and Bo got reached (after Bo made the very tactile case that sex in a queen bed is far more fun than attempting the same sort of acrobatics in a twin) and it's just the mattress that's going home with them to Hazzard. The frame of the queen bed back home was deemed untainted by his engagement to Hannah, it having belonged to Luke's parents before him, and the box spring was new to begin with. Bo's mattress will get set on top of those pieces and moved into their old bedroom, and the mattress that Hannah slept on (once and only once, but that's one too many times) will go back up into the attic. The porch-turned-bedroom can finally become the parlor that Daisy's always wanted.

After, of course, they get Bo's mattress home. And since they returned the rental truck yesterday, the only way it's getting there is if they tie it the top of the General. Which Luke's been trying to do pretty much on his own, though Bo would probably claim he's been helping. If anyone asked, but no one's going to bother when they're out here alone. All of Mooresville sleeps as late as Bo.

The rope is coarse and bites into his cold hands, leaving tiny fibers and abraded skin in its wake. Thick and hard to knot, but it's strong and it'll get them back home without having to stop every fifteen minutes to make sure it's still secure.

"That ain't going to work," Bo informs him. Not, of course, that he's offering any alternative solutions, and not that Luke would listen to him if he did. "There ain't enough room for my head."

Luke tries, he really does. Bo's already cranky, and laughing at him is not going to make it any better. But if he doesn't want to get snickered at (and that scowl when the first snort escapes Luke's nose goes to prove that he doesn't) Bo shouldn't hand off easy lines like that.

"I'm too tall," Bo asserts, testily. "Ain't all of us runts like you."

He could take offense. He could explain the logic of how he has to run the rope across the inside of the car on a diagonal in order to keep the mattress from flopping in the wind as they drive, creating drag and maybe breaking some of the springs inside, tearing through the cover – basically making this whole initiative into so much wasted time and effort – and that he chose to tie a big old knot over the driver's head because that side is going to be subject to the drag of oncoming traffic. Or he could look over his shoulder and make sure they're alone out here, then he could lean forward and kiss that pout right off of Bo's lips. Or try – the kiss gets returned, but Bo's face droops right back into misery as soon as it's over.

Luke can understand that, honestly. As much as they both want to go home to Hazzard, it's not going to be easy. Heck, the mattress itself is going to cause all manner of problems, when they explain to their kin how they plan to move Luke's twin bed up into the attic and dismantle what was going to be his marriage bed to move it into their childhood room. The rest of the day is not going to be easy and Bo's just getting an early start on worrying.

Which is wrong, all wrong. Bo should never worry, he should smile and expect the best, and count on Luke to take care of the worst. Like he always does and always has, and he's going to do it now, too.

"I'm driving," Luke informs him. This does not exactly pave the way to a smile on Bo's face. More of a full out frown, complete with lowered eyebrows. His hand catches around the back of Bo's head, pulling him forward for another kiss. It's in his best interest, he figures, not to go pointing out that his cousin's morning effort at anger is not in top form – it's more cute than off-putting. He keeps his hand cupped around the back of Bo's head, ruffling those same curls that the wind is having her way with. Close, foreheads almost touching, and he says, "It ain't going to be no fun anyways. We got to go slow and easy with this thing on our roof. Unless you want to take to flying."

There's a curl at the corner of his cousin's lip. Tiny one, but it's the first sign of anything like happiness out of Bo all morning. Luke will take it.

"You know I could fly this thing right on home, if I wanted to." A little bit of pride, too.

"Yeah, well, them cops out there ain't exactly Rosco and Enos," Luke reminds him. "They might just catch you." Bo pulls away from his grip. Probably for the best, even if Luke doesn't want to let him go. They can't be sure that no one's decided to peer out of one of the apartment windows and catch them this close together, and even if they're just moments from leaving, they don't need to start any kind of trouble before they go. "And I'm still on probation."

"Ain't no one can catch me," Bo informs him. "Not Lem Anderson, not Cale Yarborough, not you, and definitely not no cop."

Luke shrugs back at him. On a track, it's probably true. Out there on the highways with innocent civilians driving without any particular skill all around him, who knows what might happen if Bo got to racing around. "I've missed driving the General, anyway."

It's cheating, really. He knows Bo won't give him a hard time about that. All the leftover guilt and sore spots they still have from their years apart, scabs they don't want to pick at any more. Especially when they need all of their strength and skill as a team just to get through the rest of this day.

"Okay," Bo relents, steps away from him. One long, cowboy booted foot lifts and finds the passenger side window frame, a hand gripping the roof for balance.

"Hang on." The boy's just as much of a runaway train as he was when he was five. "You bring down that last box?" Bo hops his way back out of the car and jerks his thumb in the general direction of the back seat. _It's right there_ , his gesture says, _just open your eyes and you'll see it for yourself_. Luke shrugs, Bo smirks his superiority. "What about the key to the apartment?" Luke asks him, because Bo's real good about remembering a box that's big enough to trip over, but a little key in his pocket—

"I put it in the mailbox like the rental manager asked me to," Bo chirps back at him with outright pride at accomplishing this small task. "While you was busy tying all them crazy knots. What do you call them? Sheepshank, sheet bend, sheep dip?"

Not quite. "I call them good, solid knots that'll get us safely home and keep the mattress with us the whole way."

"Right, them kind of knots," Bo smirks right back at him. He always has had a certain amount of amused disdain for the knots Luke learned as a Marine. "Anyways, while you was doing that, I was doing all them other things that you can think of and a few more besides. Now, you figure you're about ready to go?" No. But yes, because what's facing him now is a full out Bo Duke grin, the type that strides up to Boss Hogg and sasses right into the face of threats, the kind that has gotten them out of every bit as much trouble as Bo has ever gotten them into. And that big old foot is in the window again, hand on the roof and that very posture challenges Luke to trot around to the driver's side of the car and start proving just how brave he really is.

They've got problems. Oh, they've got a bunch and they start with the mattress they're bringing home and go right on to how Jesse and Daisy are going to handle the significance of its arrival. Then there's Boss just waiting to reestablish Luke's probation, and he'll probably have designs on getting Bo back under his thumb, too, not to mention the number of times he's likely to try to rob his own banks now that the Duke boys are both going to be there to blame it on. There's Hannah, who will keep right on pursuing Bo to ask uncomfortable questions while fixing her anxious amber eyes on Luke, and all the rest of the girls in town that are going to start vying for the blonde Duke's (strictly unavailable) attentions. There's the barn that's probably going to be their only sanctioned refuge for rendezvous, the grass of the fields that's going to remind them of their bright and foolish youth, when they (he, mostly, Luke has to admit to himself) squandered all their opportunities to make this relationship between themselves fun and carefree.

But they're together, or will be as soon as Luke makes his careful way around and under the web of rope he tied this morning. And there's never been a single fear they couldn't face, enemy they couldn't subdue, challenge they couldn't meet, as long as they've been together. Luke lifts his leg onto the doorframe and prepares to take them back where they've both belonged all along: Hazzard.

He settles with a solid and stalwart determination into the driver's seat of the car that he and Bo built together, cranks the key and feels the engine roar underneath him. He turns to look at Bo, to catch sight of that smile one last time before it has a chance to get nervous all over again, and puts his foot to the floor, leaving nothing but blackened streaks of asphalt in their wake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This'll do 'er for this one. Took quite a bit of effort to get the boys to this (reasonably) safe place where they have faced (most of) their challenges and won. Stubborn boys made it hard, but I think we're safe to leave them here to work out the smaller problems on their own. Thanks for reading, y'all!


End file.
